Cornell student (and up and coming phenom) Colin Hancock has released Wild Jazz, his first album with the band he formed to commemorate the centennial of recorded jazz. He gathered The Original Cornell Syncopators from the student musicians at Cornell; at a concert in February 2017 they performed a re-creation of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band’s first recording session. It was so well received that they went on to appear at festivals and other venues as the year progressed, playing charts dug up or arranged by Mr. Hancock.
For anyone who has had the good fortune to follow Colin Hancock on YouTube, this quick success is hardly surprising. While still in high school he organized a group of uniquely talented students, as well as a few elder statesmen of jazz, to imagine what a Buddy Bolden recording session would have sounded like. They gathered around original equipment and cut their own wax cylinders of the event. A mini-documentary of the session may be seen via YouTube on the SemperRecords channel.
Also available on that YouTube channel is a collection of recordings by Mr. Hancock that must be heard to be believed. Using overdubbing and his uncanny ear he has re-created or imagined dozens of hot jazz recordings with extreme fidelity to the originals—and playing every instrument himself. They are so good they should be released as an album. Not simply as a novelty, eitherâ
