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Bipolar Appearing at the Metropolitan Room

Bipolar Appearing at the Metropolitan Room, New York, NY on February 1, 8 & 9. With Jed Feuer on trumpet & flugelhorn, Craig Swanson at the piano, Stephanie Long on soprano/alto sax, flute/piccolo, Barbara Merjan on drums, and David Ostrem bass, BIPOLAR is a new, most unusual quintet. It draws on the 18th and 19th, not just the 20th and 21st centuries for many of its tunes creating unexpected and exciting results.

Originals by both Feuer and Swanson join their arrangements of such concert works as Bach's B minor prelude and fugue (from book one of the Well-Tempered Klavier), Debussy's Passepied (from his Suite Bergamasque), the Presto from Beethoven's Op. 130 string quartet, Ravel's Pavane for a Dead Princess, excerpts from Wagner's Tannhauser, Prokofiev's Field Of The Dead (from the Alexander Nevsky Cantata, Op. 78), the intermezzo from Brahms' piano quintet in G minor, Op. 25, the adagio form Mozart's A Major piano concerto no. 23 KV 488, Faure's Pavane, op. 50, the prestissimo from Beethoven's Op. 109 E Major piano sonata, Rachmaninov's Etude-Tableau, Op. 39, no. 8, the Kyrie from Bach's B minor Mass, the Poco Allegretto from Brahms' 3rd Symphony and many others.

Jazz standards, such as Tune Up, Bluesette, Pent Up House, Groovin' High, All Or Nothing At All, In a Sentimental Mood, On Green Dolphin Street, You Don't Know What Love Is, I'm A Fool To Want You, A Blizzard of Lies, Along Came Betty as well as innovative songs such as And I Love Her, One Hand/One Heart, Just The Two of Us, I'll Take Romance and I Remember You, et al. make up the rest.

Recently formed by noted composer, Jed Feuer (Eating Raoul, The Big Bang, currently completing the opera, Slaughterhouse-Five, NBC mini-series, The '60s), BIPOLAR has performed in New York City at the Metropolitan Room, Bargemusic, Midtown Jazz at the Citicorp Center, The Dutch Treat Club Series, the opening of the 2006 PBS documentary, The Healing Gardens of NewYork, scored by Feuer (now in the permanent collection at MoMA), and at “A Celebration" (Lunt- Fontanne Theatre).

BIPOLAR endeavors to demonstrate variety, energy, taste and almost always, departure from the norm. By spanning three centuries, the quintet is able to take a fresh look at this repertoire from many angles, create a new sound and explore much unknown territory.





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