Featured Artist: Rob McConnell Tentet
CD Title: Music of the Twenties
Year: 2003
Record Label: Justin Time
Style: Straight-Ahead / Classic
Musicians: Rob McConnell (valve trombone); Guido Basso (trumpet, flugelhorn); Steve McDade (trumpet); Terry Promane (trombone); P.J. Perry (alto saxophone); Alex Dean, Mike Murley (tenor saxophone); Dave Restivo (piano); Steve Wallace (bass); Terry Clarke (drums, gong)
Review: After decades in the business, Rob McConnell is as busy as ever, arranging, playing six nights a week in Toronto, receiving honorary doctorates…and recording. Now on his third CD with Justin Time, McConnell this time has settled on thematic continuity for all of the songs included in Music of the Twenties (Featuring Songs by the Gershwins, Rogers & Hart, Irving Berlin and More).
Nonetheless, the Rob McConnell effect remains valid throughout this CD, despite the fact that the first performances of the songs included in it could be remembered now only by nonagenarians. That is, McConnell’s buttery tone and effortless articulation remain as impressive as ever. His arrangements, through canny harmonies, make the tentet sound like an eighteentet or nineteentet. Whimsy slyly emerges unexpectedly, as in the gong in minor third at the end of “I Can’t Believe That You’re in Love with Me.” And the group’s collective musical “personality,” for want of a better word--a personality of subtle pulse as if the group contains its own throbbing circulatory system driven by an imagined heart--remains instantly identifiable as one shaped by McConnell’s arrangements, as did his Boss Brass.
Despite the age of the ageless material, McConnell shapes it with witty interpretations that are as contemporary as those applied to recent popular music. Contrasting a burner like “Love Come Back to Me” with trumpeter Steve McDade’s gorgeous virtual singing of the melody to What’ll I Do,” the tentet injects so much combined enthusiasm into its playing, no matter what the tempo, that, in the end, listeners are drawn to it through irresistible charm. And just so everyone knows the high level of musicianship for each of the band’s members, McConnell set up the opening tune, “Thou Swell,” to allow for ten brief solos upon its swell changes, one for each member. Even though individual standouts exist, like saxophonist Mike Murley’s unfolding of “With a Song in My Heart’s” melody, as always the voice we remember is that of Rob McConnell’s valve trombone confidently gliding over intervals he wrote and improvises, as he has done for the last thirty-plus decades.
Tracks: Thou Swell, Remember, Lover Come Back to Me, Can’t We Be Friends, Always, I Can’t Believe That You’re in Love with Me, Indian Summer, How Long Has This Been Going On, You Do Something to Me, With a Song in My Heart, What’ll I Do
Record Label Website: http://www.justin-time.com
Reviewed by: Don Williamson
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