Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've always liked Frank Sinata and Big Band music.
Being from a big band is great because you can do other bands.
Being such a big band is never a problem but it can be distracting.
Because usually in the past when I was in a big band, that was all I did.
I like pop, rock n' roll, big band, Broadway - I like all those elements.
I still miss music and singing. One day, I'm going to sing with a big band.
My mother was really into big band. It was played in the house all the time.
I started a big band when grunge was popular. I mean, that didn't make much sense.
With my little band, I did everything they did with a big band. I made the blues jump.
We want to be big... we want to be a big band, but we don't want to be your best friends.
It is not very practical in today's world when you tour all over the place having a big band.
I love most melodic music - classical, reggae, big band, jazz, blues, country, pop, swing, folk.
I grew up in a very musical family, my father was a musician and a big band leader and made records.
So I was always around music and my dad was in his own way a progressive jazzer, a big band jazzer guy.
My sister loved country music. My mother loved Spanish music. And my dad was into big band music and jazz.
Not everybody wanted a female to be the front face of a big band, you know... You had to be three times better than a man had to be.
I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading.
I grew up mostly with classical, big band, and a lot of Irish music - I really didn't start listening to rock and roll until I was maybe sixteen.
I like the power and versatility of a big band and how an orchestra can vary the dynamics from very loud to very quiet, and SNJO covers those bases.
With a smaller setting, you have a lot more freedom and flexibility within a given moment, but not necessarily the velocity you have with a big band.
The Big Band Era is my era. People say, 'Where did you get your style from?' I did the Big Band Era on guitar. That's the best way I could explain it.
I played Big Band jazz music. I wasn't into rock and roll. I was just there because it was a living. I surprised everyone. I'm still surprising people.
I've been saying for almost 20 years that I need to do a jazz project and it ought to be either big band or I should do some jazz songs with a trio or quartet.
I still love recording and still love the stage, but like my dad, I have the most fun when I am in front of that glorious orchestra or that kick-butt big band.
Then I left that school and I went to Cerritos College, which was in southern California; they had one of the best big band programs in the country at the time.
When I got my band in 1983, I knew what I had to do. If I'm going to have a big band, they're going to have to sound equally as good as what I'm used to hearing.
What music I listen to day to day changes very, very much. I can go from bluegrass to heavy metal, to blues, to classical and big band and then go to pop and rap.
Ella can work nightclubs that Duke might not be able to work, because of having the big band. Where they go now is strictly a matter of their own names and talents.
It was by listening to Goodman's band, that I began to notice the guitarist Charlie Christian, who was one of the first musicians to play solos in a big band set-up.
Living composers writing for big band are very few and far between. There are not a lot of them, and I have a talent for doing it. I am zeroing in on what I do best.
I like having a big band because it gives you more options. They can always not play and I can do the quiet stuff, but when we want to do the big arrangements, we can.
Not many people come out of a big band as the lead singer/songwriter and making a record, and all of a sudden we're all happily sailing at the same pace as we were before.
My brother had a big band in high school; after that we continued to play together, eventually forming a group called the Jazz Brothers, that recorded for Riverside Records.
When I'd hear something that sounded like I could follow it - most of those big band jazz tunes are blues anyway - I would hum it and play with the fiddle while I was humming.
There's sort of an open offer to work with a guy in Los Angeles who does big band and orchestra arrangements who was at least an acquaintance to Les Baxter before he passed away.
My brother was always in bands and on the road when I was a kid and he was my inspiration. He never made it with a big band, in fact he never made a record. Here he is fifty-something years old.
Since the big band started I'm just always swamped with movies and things. It certainly pays the bills and it's very satisfying, because I get to write all these big charts and all this crazy music.
I always told the people at Cal Arts that if they wanted me to do Jazz studies, first of all, there couldn't be a big band within 500 miles and that I could do what I wanted to do. And they said I could.
I know it might be surprising to some, but anyone who knows me - especially those who shared a changing room with me in my playing days who first told me I could sing - will tell you what a big fan I am of big band music.
You don't get anything easy when you come from a big band and you go and start another one. You learn real fast that, 'Wow! I went from the top of the mountain to all the way back to the bottom, and I've gotta start over.'
When I did the album for 'When Harry Met Sally,' I found myself out there in front of this big band, which I had no idea how to do, and they wiped the floor with me. It's a very specific skill, and I didn't know how to do it.
I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading. So I made an economic decision, and it turned out the best judgment I ever made in my life.
Something happened in the nineties. There was a shift. I don't want to blame it on grunge or the rise of indie - but that was basically it. It was seen as dirty and kind of ignorant to have these ambitions, to want to be a big band.
When 'American Slang' came out, everyone was like, 'This is the next big band in the world, and this is blah blah blah Bruce Springsteen Junior and blah blah blah,' and I was just like, 'I don't know what that means. I don't know. We'll see.'
I mean, I don't think I would call Claus to do an album of big band tunes. You know, just like arrangers write for the artist they have in mind; you have to keep in mind if you're going to work with Claus Ogerman. You invite him to do what he does.
Bacharach has such a brilliant ear for melody and his music has a completely timeless feel to it; I thought it would be great to do a whole album of his music and to record with a full orchestra and big band which is something I hadn't done before.
I really love Dinah Washington and anything live from her - she had some of the greatest jazz musicians in the whole world, and sometimes she would be with a big band, and sometimes she'd just be on stage with a muted trumpet, upright bass, and a piano.
When I first set up my big band, I only had Gilson Lavis, the drummer from Squeeze, with me. He was the core element. Whenever a group hits the big time, they always get a new drummer because they really need that. You can make do with rubbish elsewhere.
I was growing up at a time when music was growing and changing so fast. I had learned all the big band sounds of the 1940s, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey. But then along came Chuck Berry, Les Paul, Fats Domino and I figured out how to make their music as well.
When do you suppose the electric guitar was invented? If you thought the 1950s, you'd be wrong. If you can muster a recollection of hearing electric guitar in Lionel Hampton's big band in the 1940s and date it to that decade, you'd still be off - by more than 30 years.