Vince Giordano at The Iridium Jazz Club

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The 11-piece jazz-age big band Vince Giordano and his Nighthawks will keep patrons at The Iridium entertained with swinging jazz music of the '20s and '30s during weekly performances September 13, October 11, October 25, November 8, November 15, November 29, December 6, December 20. The performances resurrect jazz sounds of yesteryear and promise to keep patrons entertained while providing a festive atmosphere. The 11-piece group has been featured on many movie soundtracks including The Cotton Club, Finding Forrester, Ghostworld, Bloodhounds on Broadway and Sweet and Lowdown, and The Aviator. Vince and The Nighthawks Orchestra are featured on the new Bluebird Records CD It's De Lovely, backing up vintage recordings of Cole Porter singing.

As a fledging musician, Vince got a lesson from Pablo Casals. "I was watching one of his master classes on the television. They were old kinescopes, poorly filmed and very echoey. One session, a young lady cellist puts down her bow and said, 'oh, Mister Casals, I have so much to learn!' Casals raised his eyebrows and bow and loudly exclaimed, 'I have so much to learn!'" Vince learned a message from that and now rarely sleeps. During the day he file-searches and curates at the RCA/BMG Archives; during the evenings he continues his early investigation of early jazz and swing compositions, and in-between times, he's sharing what he's learned with the audience. What he's learned, says the New Yorker, "breathes life into an overlooked era."

Vince was born in Brooklyn and moved to Long Island when he was two. He started on the violin in the third grade but switched to tuba, string bass and bass sax in his early teens.

By age 14, he was working with Dixieland and banjo bands. Yes, he would revisit his grandmother back in Brooklyn to listen to her massive 78- rpm collection but it took a study and friendship with Bill Challis, the Goldkette/Whiteman arranger, to mentor him on the music of the Jazz Age.

Joining the Navy in 1970, Vince toured with the Navy Show Band. After his tour of duty, it led him to engagements with Tony Parenti, Max Kaminski, and Dick Hyman in NYC and a tour with Clyde McCoy and Eddy Davis abroad. Wherever he went, he was collecting relics: records, sheet music, band arrangements, musical instruments, plus all the old musicians stories.

Then he met Rich Conaty of the radio show "The Big Broadcast" and they recruited veterans from the 1920's, 30's and 40's big bands to play pared-down Whiteman arrangements, thus establishing a "Preservation Hall up in New York" and learning in the process how to organize his own band. In 1976 he created Vince Giordano's Nighthawks.

"Beginning with our CD Quality Shout, I was determined to record what I grew up listening to, to recreate those great arrangements, those great bands." As crowning rewards for his determination, Vince has worked with film directors Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen, Gus Van Sant, and Martin Scorsese.

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