Big Band

In these lean economic times for municipalities, there's still one thing that's free: Entertainment. Several Burlington County towns are offering easy times this summer, despite cutbacks in other parts of municipal budgets. "Municipalities have had to cut back on so many services, but not on summer entertainment," said Suzanne Veitengruber, Tabernacle's township administrator. "Municipally sponsored movies and concerts are big summertime traditions in Burlington County. " To help pay for movie and concert series, many municipalities are following the lead of Tabernacle and Burlington City and asking civic groups or businesses to help them defray the costs.

There is an abundance of talk these days about the shortage of jazz in Philadelphia and the lack of interest in it among the young. One organization, the Mill Creek Jazz and Cultural Society, is doing something about it. Much of this is due to the efforts of Ron Dewey Wynn, the organization's executive director, who instituted a "Back to the Roots" series of concerts and workshops offered free to school-age youngsters. Now, Wynn, in collaboration with noted trumpeter Johnny Coles, has come up with something else, the Mill Creek Jazz Orchestra, which will give its first performance Sunday at the society's West Philadelphia facility.

No, they're not installing mosh pits in the Superstar Theater at Resorts, but when the Brian Setzer Orchestra kicks in this weekend, it isn't likely there will be too many motionless bodies on the premises. Setzer, it should be understood, has his roots in, first, the new-wave music that came along in the late '70s and, then, as the spearhead of a rockabilly revival with his Stray Cats in the '80s. OK, so now he's into a big-band thing - 17 musicians strong, to be exact - but this delegation sports a musical dimension not associated with those wonderful units that were so hot back in the '30s and '40s.

Harry Connick Jr. is getting up there. It seems like just yesterday when he made his impressive recording debut at the age of 18, and now he's 24. How time flies - especially when you're having fun. And make no mistake about it - Connick is having fun. Currently, Connick is on tour with his 17-piece band in support of his latest album, Blue Light, Red Light (Columbia Records) - a mission that will bring him into Philadelphia to kick off the new season at the Mann Music Center tonight through Sunday.

The Sammy Kaye Swing and Sway Orchestra and the Original Four Aces will highlight this summer's program of free concerts sponsored by the Pennypack Park Festival. Kaye will bring his big band to the band shell in the park July 16 for an 8 p.m. concert, said Louis Farinella, executive director of the 22-year-old festival. The Original Four Aces, a Philadelphia group that has been singing doo-wop music for three decades, will perform Aug. 13. Thirteen concerts are scheduled for this year's series, which will begin July 9 and end Aug. 27, Farinella said.

For those inspired by Maria Schneider's example, the composer and bandleader has a dash of harsh reality to offer: "I don't think anybody would ever say having a big band is a good idea. Let me tell you, it's not a good idea. " Of course, like many an innovator before her, Schneider has resolutely failed to follow her own advice. The Maria Schneider Orchestra has survived the vicissitudes of the jazz business for almost 15 years - in fact, it has thrived. Schneider's latest CD, "Sky Blue," released through the artist-centered online music service artistShare, was one of last year's musical highlights.

In jazz - or in any music, for that matter - the big band is all but dead and gone, mostly for economic reasons. So it is always important to check the state of the big band when Wynton Marsalis' Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, the 800-pound gorilla of jazz big bands, comes to town. After all, the group is one of a handful of big bands that go on the road a substantial amount of the time, and due to Marsalis' status and the money of Lincoln Center, the group is now the best-known big orchestra in jazz.

A scorching afternoon at Penn's Landing. Feels like 95 in the shade, and there's no shade. All you want to do is lie back, suck down a few cold ones, and pray for a breeze. Surely, nobody's in the mood for excitement. So along comes the mighty Joe Sudler Swing Machine, and we're all in the mood. A most vital life-support system for a big-band style that's supposed to be dead, the Machine beat the heat, beat the humidity, and just plain beat it yesterday afternoon in a free JazzReach at the Mellon Jazz Festival concert that had the crowd steamed up and loving it. The Philadelphia-based Sudler Machine is probably the most muscular big band ever.

When veteran jazz singer Herb Jeffries comes to town, he causes quite a stir. In Burlington City Thursday, Mayor Herman T. Costello said he's a big fan of the man who used to tour with Duke Ellington. Big band leader and Willingboro resident Erskine Hawkins got together with Jeffries and enjoyed memories of the 1930s big band era. Three women at the Cafe Galleria just blushed after Jeffries flattered them repeatedly. On Thursday night, about 800 people at Riverfront Park greeted Jeffries warmly.

Delaware County Summer Festival presents Jim Palo's Commanders tonight. They will perform big-band music from the Dorsey-Miller-James era. Lorraine Sharkey is the group's vocalist. Rain date is Tuesday. On Saturday night, the Brandywine Ballet Company presents a performance of classical and contemporary dance pieces from their repertoire. Guest performers will dance to music from Aladdin and the Vienna Waltz. Rain date is Monday. The Jazz Ensemble (First U.S. Army Band) will perform medleys of jazz and big-band arrangements at the festival Sunday evening.

Phrases like "a musician's musician" and "a singer's singer" normally seem restrictive. Such acclaim can pigeonhole an artist, creating an air of insular complexity unappealing to the general public. Saying as much about vocalist Kevin Mahogany could never be such a slight. With a big, supple voice, blue swing styling, and an easygoing way with any rhythm placed before him, Mahogany has long been a critical darling and a crowd-pleaser. Currently, he can be found thrilling crowds with the good groove material of Next Time You See Me , his collaboration with his guitarist pal Dave Stryker and his organ trio.

WHEN THE late Frank Rizzo was Philadelphia police commissioner, he wanted Donald Wilson to be his bodyguard. Although Don was fond of Rizzo, he had to turn him down. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I have music to play. " Don was a devoted cop for 22 years, but his first love was music — jazz, to be specific. He was a virtuoso on the piano and trumpet, and played in the police band and at the jazz clubs that once flourished in Philly, performing with John Coltrane and other notables of the jazz world.

Pete Rugolo, 95, the chief arranger for the Stan Kenton Orchestra in its late-1940s heyday and a prolific composer and arranger for television and film, including the series Richard Diamond, Private Detective , The Fugitive and Run for Your Life , died Sunday in Sherman Oaks, Calif. Mr. Rugolo was still in uniform, leading the Army band at Fort Scott in San Francisco, when he handed a half-dozen arrangements to his idol Stan Kenton at the Golden Gate Theater. When he left the service, he was hired by Kenton and went on to write more than a hundred arrangements for that big band, helping establish the progressive sound of its peak years.

It's curious that Curio Theatre wasn't too intimidated by the Wilma Theater's 2008 production of Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice to produce it itself. That earlier version, with its Barrymore-winning original music, sun-bleached set, and stylized direction, set a standard that this small, new-ish, low-budget West Philly company would have a rough time matching. Even curiouser? Curio's production, under the direction of Liz Carlson, gets at the heart of Ruhl's work, humanizing it, bringing its tragic elements to the fore, and making the Wilma's production seem downright aloof.

AS A KID growing up in Frankford, George Ballard liked to follow the American Legion parades through his neighborhood, and would march along with the drummers. Maybe it was then that George decided he wanted to pound those drums himself, because somehow he conveyed the ambition to his father, who gave him a set of drums he bought from a pawnbroker when George was only 10. That was how it started. George took drumming lessons for 75 cents a session, and by the time he was 16, was allowed to sit in on the Herb Thornton Band, which he heard playing at the Philadelphia Boys Club.

It's an accomplishment to keep any band together for 10 years, let alone a big band performing difficult music in the same room - in this case, a room where the stage is too small to contain the ensemble. But this week, saxophonist/composer Bobby Zankel and his Warriors of the Wonderful Sound marked that milestone, celebrating a decade of playing first Thursdays at Tritone. Someone arrived with a pair of "Best Wishes" balloons, but otherwise it was business as usual for the Warriors, who spent two hour-long sets maneuvering through the thorny terrain of Zankel's complex compositions before a small but enthusiastic crowd in the red-walled South Street bar. The evening began, in fact, less like a party than a memorial service, paying homage to the late, undersung trumpet great Bill Dixon (who died last year)

True icons of music are being celebrated with new releases and a little help from their friends. ROBBIE'S BACK: Just because he's doing a couple of TV shows - "Late Night with David Letterman" tonight, "The View" tomorrow - is no reason to conclude Robbie Robertson will be hitting the road again. The guy famously gave up touring decades ago in the rockumentary "The Last Waltz. " Still, there's juicy news for fans. Robertson's "How To Become Clairvoyant" (429 Records, A)

A year ago, Harry Prime thought his singing career had come to an unhappy end with the sale of the Roasted Pepper restaurant in Chalfont, where he had performed for seven years of Thursdays. "Like a body blow," he describes it. The former big-band singer lived over the restaurant, which made the commute to his gig possible. At 90, macular degeneration has left him unable to drive or read. "All I can do is sing," he says, but as of last November, finding an audience had become a challenge.

Much as the classic jazz singers of yore mined the Gershwin and Porter songbooks, today's more modern-minded chanteuse pores through Bjork's repertoire, so much that the Icelandic pop eccentric's every song seems on the verge of becoming an idiosyncratic standard. So why shouldn't those tunes get the big-band treatment the way those 1940s gems did in their own day? That's the idea behind alto saxophonist Travis Sullivan's Bjorkestra , which supplements the traditional big-band instrumentation with electronics, while vocalist Becca Stevens splits the difference between swing stylings and Bjork's more-offbeat approach.

Mark Davis, 93, of Cherry Hill, one of the last musicians from the local big band era who played many of Philadelphia's elite balls and parties for almost 50 years, died Sunday, May 2, at Lions Gate in Cherry Hill. Mr. Davis started playing the violin at 5. By the time he graduated from South Philadelphia High School in 1932, he was ready to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra. However, to support a family, he knew he would have to supplement what orchestra musicians made in those days, his son Ken said.