I was at Oxford Lindy Exchange last weekend, where British swing supergroup The Shirt Tail Stompers provided Sunday’s live dancing soundtrack. Before their set, bandleader Steven Coombe and co held a seminar on musicality in swing dance—a fascinating, hour-long workshop which could be summed up as a polite but insistent, “Are you really listening, though?” So it was a curious coincidence that the first record to land in my reviews inbox this week was Swingin’ Uptown: “a celebration of Harlem and the historic link between music and dance in jazz,” according to the PR bumf.
The seventh (sixth full-length) release by the Eyal Vilner Big Band, this delectable platter serves up sixteen helpings of extremely danceable music, spicing up old staples and creating nouvelle cuisine in the form of four original additions to the melodic menu. It’s a slick, sexy banquet of blues, swing and hot jazz which leaves the listener both fully satisfied and craving second helpings. (Wow. That metaphor stuck around like the taste of a bacon-flavored Frazzle.)
Israeli multi-instrumentalist, bandleader and composer Eyal Vilner moved to New York in 2007, assembled his big band in 2008 and has graced famous NYC stages including Lincoln Center, the Guggenheim, Birdland, Dizzy's Club, Smalls, Minton’s Playhouse, Harlem Jazzmobile and Central Park SummerStage since then. His crew have also playe
