USA:Ed Palermo Big Band - A Lousy Day in Harlem (2019)

In a radical departure, jazz’s state-of-the-art orchestra – The Ed Palermo Big Band – has recorded a thrilling program of…jazz! An ingenious arranger, composer and alto saxophonist, Ed Palermo has spent much of the past three decades earning international renown with a series of albums transmuting fervidly loved rock songs by Frank Zappa, Todd Rundgren, and their British brethren into supremely imaginative vehicles for improvisation with his 18 piece jazz big band. With A Lousy Day in Harlem, he unleashes his talent-laden ensemble on a gorgeous array of music by Ellington, Monk, Coltrane, Egberto Gismonte, and his own finely wrought originals. Slated for release on Sky Cat Records, the album captures a master arranger and jazz big band leader at the top of his game, putting his own unmistakable stamp on canonical compositions. Firmly in the tradition, the project reveals that Palermo’s nonpareil gift for recasting beloved tunes encompasses jazz too.

“The thing about this record is, I wanted it to be jazzier,” says Palermo. “We play a lot of jazz in my band, but I’ve been doing Zappa and British Invasion stuff for years and I’ve had these other types of music in my book, jazz tunes that had been close to my heart for decades. I finally felt ready to record these tunes – tunes I’d composed, and tunes I’d arranged. It felt like the right time to show the world another side of the band.”