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| BEST LARGE JAZZ ENSEMBLE: STEVE GADD - EDDIE GOMEZ - RONNIE CUBER & WDR BIG BAND arranged & conducted by MICHAEL ABENECENTER STAGE BEST LARGE JAZZ ENSEMBLE: 65th Grammy Awards STEVE GADD - EDDIE GOMEZ - RONNIE CUBER & WDR BIG BAND arranged & conducted by MICHAEL ABENE CENTER STAGE FINAL ROUND VOTING DECEMBER 14, 2022 - JANUARY 4, 2023 For the first time in a very long time super drummer STEVE GADD joins up with his friends from "Gadd Gang" times, EDDIE GOMEZ and RONNIE CUBER for a production with the WDR Big Band. Under the direction of Michael Abene, a heavenly groovy album emerges, with Steve Gadd and his friends taking center stage. The cooperation between Steve's Gadd Gang and the WDR Big Band was hanging in the air for quite some time. Already back in 2011 there was talk about a potential collaboration with the Big Band under the leadership of Michael Abene (the chief conductor of that orchestra from 2004 to 2014). "I love Michael and highly esteem his work", says Gadd, "his arrangements as well as his piano playing. It is just a matter of trying to get the schedule together, but I am sure at some point we will be able to get it together." In January / February 2022 the time had eventually come. The recordings for Center Stagetook place at the WDR, in the Big Band's studio. The atmosphere of a recording studio is more familiar to Steve than to most others. Steve Gadd is considered THE studio-drummer par excellence. Since the mid-1970s, he has refined innumerable albums of a "who is who" of pop and jazz history with his incredibly precise performance and unique groove. Also for Michael Abene, this project is the realization of a log-conceived wish – and a long awaited reunion with old friends and colleagues: "I'd spoken to Steve a couple of times a few years ago. And he said, "Yeah, I'd love to do it!" I know the producer Joachim Becker and we started talking about this for quite some time. And, of course, it's a scheduling problem, to get a guy like Steve Gadd, it's only scheduling problems. But fortunately it worked out great, it was really a fun project! And it was great to see those guys coming here, we hadn't seen one another for a while. Ronnie Cuber, Eddie Gomez and I were part of the Youth Band, it was called The Newport Youth Band. Eddie, Ronnie and I were sixteen at the time, Eddie was fourteen when we met, and he played already very well, and Ronnie when he was sixteen played very well, too. So there is a lot of history there." As an aside: The performance of the Newport Youth Band at the Newport Jazz Festival 1959 with Abene, Cuber and Gomez was released on LP at the time (Coral CRL 57306). For Michael Abene Center Stage was also a reunion with the big band he had led as chief conductor for ten years: "Oh I love it! This is my cousins and my nephews and my sisters and brothers here!" (laughs) Baritone saxophonist Ronnie Cuber and bassist Eddie Gomez travelled to Cologne as long time members of the Gadd Gang – a band established in the mid-80s and Steve's first band under his own name. Further members of the group were guitarist Cornell Dupree and pianist and keyboarder Richard Tee, both have already died. Dupree, Tee and Gadd were also part of Stuff, the predecessor band of the Gadd Gang: with a contagious mix of funk, soul and R&B it was a true "live band" and proved a recipe for finger snappin' and foot tappin'. Steve remembers these exciting times: "It was incredible. Chris Parker and me and Gordon Edwards and Tee, Dupree, and Eric Gale. And these guys were, when I went to New York, heroes to me, And as great as it was musically to play Chick's music which was incredible - on the other end of the spectrum, you know, there was Stuff which was a much simpler form. It was good, it was just a hang, you know what I mean?! And it was fun to do it at Mikell's, every night, that made it even more tight." The Gadd Gang carried on what Steve already had appreciated at Stuff: "Keep it simple and have fun!" The Gang also continued to perform songs taken from the repertoire of Stuff – Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" or Bob Dylan's "Watching the River Flow". "Songs that I like. You do them with an electric bass, and then starting it with an upright bass, it's still the same song but it has a whole different feel to it. I like that." Eddie Gomez: "I always liked the idea that a bass just fits in all kinds of music. And with Steve I wanted to have that opportunity, to have that feeling of playing that kind of music, that rhythm & blues with the bass violin. I remember years ago when Jeremy and I played together in a bluesy jazz-rock-group called ‚Jeremy and the Satyrs', they said, well, the bass just doesn't fit, and we can't hear it. There is a way to make the bass work, you know, and for me it was a kind of challenge I enjoyed doing it. It's fun!." Some classics from the repertoire of the Gadd Gang can also be found on Center Stage: "I Can't Turn You Loose", "Che Ore So'", "Them Changes", "Way Back home", "Lucky 13", "Honky Tonk/I Can't Stop Loving You", and "My Little Brother". As a rhythm section, Gomez and Gadd are a committed team – not only since the Gadd Gang. Already in 1978, they worked together on Corea's album Friends and in 1981 on his LP Three Quartets (together with Mike Brecker). For Center Stage the two provide a very reliable base to build on. Michael Abene: "Eddie and Steve played in so many different musical situations. So when they play the time together, there is nothing to worry about, bascically. And by the second day the band started to know how to play with Steve, and Steve and Eddie knew how to play with the band." Ronnie Cuber, the third Gang-member, is no less a proven recipe for power play and groove: experienced in soul-jazz, hardbop, blues, funk and Latin, this excellent baritone saxophonist joined the cream of the New York studio scene in the 70s. "There was a lot of work, you know. I was among the top studio musicians, Randy Brecker, Mike Brecker, Richard Tee, Steve Gadd, all those guys. And I was also playing with Eddie Palmieri's latin band, and with King Curtis' band." Cuber is a shrewd long-time professional, with a lot of combo- and big band experience and a belling sound that makes him immediately recognizable. The experienced members of the Gadd Gang are joined by the WDR Big Band, one of the most renowned jazz orchestras in the world. To join them together to form a coherent whole only looks easy on paper and it took the know-how of another man to make it happen, Michael Abene: "I did that with Maceo. And that was the interesting part, this concerto-grosso-like situation. Knowing the music and knowing the guys basically, it's kind of like, okay, you got to figure out a way to stay out of the way. At the same time add something that's gonna make it sound. Now we got a big band as opposed to just reproducing the small group sound. So I think it was a combination of everything, to know how to write for that situation and to keep the groove in the band, not only in the rhythm section. It's got to be right where Steve and Eddie play the time. And, you know, that was fun! I mean, I'd rather do projects like this than so called "bad jazz projects", whatever you wanna call it. This project, if you didn't have these guys, this project would have been terrible!" However, they found the right people. Michael Abene: "Bobby Sparks, an excellent keyboard player, played organ and some piano. And Simon Oslender, a marvellous young player, played also organ and piano, he is a good groove player! And the guitarist Bruno Müller, as well! I know Steve, and Steve was especially happy with them because that's a hard thing, a hard position to step into. We are thinking of Richard Tee and Cornell Dupree! It was rough, it could have been really desasterous, really!" (laughs) Steve Gadd: "Oh, they sounded great! Really nice. And they are good guys, man, and you could tell they wanted to be t write your comments about the article :: © 2022 Jazz News :: home page |