Big Band Trombone Moments #9

Thanks for watching another episode of BBTM! It’s been a while, but this episode features some real, high-quality recordings.

Below you shall find YouTube links to all the recordings featured, accompanied with a small analysis of the trombone moment, and of course the download to the PDF. If you have any suggestions for future episodes, feel free to comment on the video, or drop me an email via the description.

Invitation – Airmen of Note

Invitation is a song arranged by the talented Mike Crotty.

At first, I thought my ears deceived me. 6 trombones?! Surely not! But listening to the intro several times, it’s clear you can hear six individual voices entering, with Dave Steinmeyer soaring in at the end.

What I enjoyed most about this intro was how the II-V-I was voiced for each chord, as there are never any overlapping chord tones in the trombone parts (apart from the A in the C#+7(#9)).

Keeping the bottom 2 voices either a 7th or an octave and a 3rd away saves the dense chord from sounding too muddy. The middle voices in this range sound the best when notes are closely voiced. I’ll be sure to borrow this 6 note-voicing technique when applying it across a whole big band.

Too Darn Hot – Pete Long Orchestra

I first came across this song from playing it in a big band, and it’s rare to get some fun trombone solis in a vocal number! This particular arrangement of Too Darn Hot is by Buddy Bregman, who conducted and arranged for Ella Fitzgerald, leading to two best-selling albums in 1956; the Cole Porter Songbook and the Rodgers and Hart Songbook.

This small, 8-bar moment comes in the pieces B section, where the piece temporarily travels to C major from the home key C minor.

What I found distinctive about this closed-voiced soli section was the vast amount of 6 chords (eg. C6, Fm6, and Bb6(b5)) that Bregman resolved to. The difference between a F6 and an Fm6 compared to Fmaj7 and an Fm7 is that only one note changes in the chord compared to 2, meaning the sudden key change isn’t so jarring and noticeable, in my opinion.

Cha-Cha Toda la Noche – Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra

This piece was part of program of music arranged and composed by trombonist Christopher Crenshaw for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Some noticeable things about this 3-voice soli is bar 5 where we get a temporary semitone clash between the 2nd and 3rd trombone. Other options could have been the 3rd trombone playing an F# instead of a G#, however, it means the 3rd trombone is repeating the F# in the next bar which is poor voice-leading. Also, you don’t get nearly as much tension with the F#, giving you a B7 chord instead of the crunchier B13 that Christopher has written.

You can hear Christopher Crenshaw go into depth about a lot of the pieces on the program at this YouTube masterclass.

Teddy The Toad – WDR Big Band

A classic by Neal Hefti that has been given a fresh coat by Jörg Achim Keller. The original track on the album The Atomic Mr Basie only includes 3 trombones, so it’s interesting to see how Jörg has added the bass trombone part.

For the first 6 bars of this soli, the bass trombone matches the 2nd trombone part and octave down, as they’re playing the root of the chord. At bar 7, we get 4 separate voices, giving us a Bbm6 chord. Jörg could have used an Ab here but it doesn’t match the descending pitches of the other parts, and also the muddy interval between the 2 lower trombone parts is exaggerated the closer the bottom part gets to the Db in the 3rd Trom.

Slidin’ Home – Joe Gallardo & NDR Big Band

I’ve recently been fascinated by Latin Jazz and it’s influence on jazz as a whole after reading the book Latin Jazz by Christopher Washburne. This whole album, Latin Jazz Latino, by trombonist Joe Gallardo and the NDR Big Band covers a range of styles and rhythms you should definitely listen to.

The sub-genre of Slidin’ Home is son montuno which usually incorporates fast & complex horn arrangements, and this certainly exemplifies that! It features 2 solo trombones and the complex, sycnopated rhythms stretch far from it featured in my video.

Thanks again for watching (and reading). If you support what I do, any donations are hugely appreciated to keep the content coming.