LOREN SCHOENBERG AND HIS JAZZ ORCHESTRA, So Many Memories

Esteemed retro-jazz label Turtle Bay Records and veteran pianist, band leader and two-time Grammy winning jazz scholar Loren Schoenberg are a match made in contemporary updates of classic obscure big band arrangement heaven.

Four prolific decades after his original big band recorded the first of five albums, and years after he began overseeing the Benny Goodman Archives at Yale University, the longtime Julliard jazz history professor mines fresh magic in the historically important and musically vibrant but long overlooked arrangements of legendary swing era arranger Eddie Sauter on So Many Memories, recorded by Loren Schoenberg and His Jazz Orchestra.

Passionately performed by numerous Julliard affiliated musicians (including past and present students) and spotlighting breakout vocalist Kate Kortum and renowned vibraphonist Warren Wolf, the generous 16-track repertoire showcases previously unheard, exciting and exuberant arrangements from 1936-39 that Sauter created for bandleader and early jazz vibes great Red Norvo and his wife, singer Mildred Bailey, collectively known in that era as “Mr. and Mrs. Swing.” While some of the tunes will be familiar – Duke Ellington’s “Azure,” the Gershwins’ “Nice Work if You Can Get It,” for instance – others like “I Know That You Know,” “Old Folks” and Jerome Kern’s “You Couldn’t Be Cuter” – will feel like grand discoveries that should be, and will now be, known better.

Though Schoenberg, whose piano is a guiding force throughout, sold Turtle Bay on the project with the words, “a big band album of esoteric material,” he turned the concept into so much more than an exercise in obscure nostalgia. Tapping into the many musical loves of his life, he creates a poppin’ contemporary big band album for the ages.