Neal Kirkwood Big Band: 'Night City' paints an open-ended ensemble landscape

 All sorts of jazz statements can be folded within the contemporary big band, and composer-pianist Neal

Neal Kirkwood shows zest for personalizing big-band sound.

Kirkwood displays much of the variety of texture, tempo, structure and expanse possible in this veteran musician's first big-band album. "Night City" (BJU Records) 

The new disc brings together compositions he's written for large ensembles over several decades. His sense of jazz history, with some evident roots in Duke Ellington and Gil Evans, is of a high order, as is his penchant for borderline "classical" orchestration and tone poems such as "The Light of Birds," which concludes the disc.

Of the several long cuts, I was struck by his evocation of urban sensory overload in the title track, which evokes a couple of firends meandering together around the city. The surface randomness turns out to be tightly constructed, with bits and pieces sensitively juxtaposed. 

But my favorite was "Paddy Harmon's Dreamland Ballroom," named for a famous Chicago nightspot of the Prohibition Era. In "Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History, 1904-1930," William Howland Kenney sums up Harmon's success as blending a guarded acceptance of jazz within a dance-hall business format, especially attracting working-class clientele. Kirkwood's take on that scene covers a wide range of moods, evoking old musical styles that lent themselves to social dancing, with a certain amount of swing, but not too much. Kirkwood reminds us in a program note that Harmon paid for the development of the trumpet mute that carries his name. (Played without its stem, this mute was a major aspect of Miles Davis' sound.)

Soloing is quite apt for the setting, as it tends to be for however Kirkwood places his soloists. In "Dreamland Ballroom" they are clarinetist Dan Block and trumpeter David Smith. In "Night City," the roaming buddies are James Rogers, bass trombone, and Ed Neumeister, tenor trombone. Kirkwood is an infrequent  soloist on this disc, but always makes a distinctive impression: His piano intro on "Alaskan Serenade" sounds Ellingtonian, which is fitting since the piece was written for a Duke trombonist, Britt Woodman, a characterization here executed with mastery by Art Baron.

 "When I Hear That Serenade in Blue," which Kirkwood wrote for a jazz vocal ensemble, in this version has the vocal line enunciated by vibraphonist Diane Herold, behind whom the band places a sliding, smoky backdrop. The only adaptation of a piece originally designed for other purposes that doesn't quite work, even though it swings with abandon, is "Skywalkers," which makes the groove do too much work. Yet again, however, it displays Kirkwood's competence in the multifaceted personality an expert big band is capable of projecting.