The News and Observer Raleigh ,NC April 19, 09
"GELB MAKES IT SWING
Gig for gig, tenor saxophonist Gregg Gelb may have been the busiest jazz musician in central North Carolina for the last 20 years. As leader of the Gregg Gelb Swing Band, director of the Heart of Carolina Jazz Orchestra, a founding member of the NC Jazz Repertory Orchestra, a jazz educator, and leader of numerous ad-hoc small groups, Gelb is, by example, an advocate for the music.
With "Breakaway" (MG Records) , he cuts to the heart of his experience - a quartet blowing session with seven of his original compositions.
Most of the tunes are singable, and Gelb offers warm-toned improvisation on each. His solos balance lyricism and fluid double -time passages. His rhythmic feeling is straight-ahead and swinging.
"Summer Haze,'" the lone clarinet performance, conjures up an exotic mood similar to Benny Carter's "Key Largo." "Big Change's Comin'" is the kind of swinging tune you can imagine the Count Basie Band playing. "Contemplation" is a fine ballad with sophisticated harmony.
Gelb's rhythm - pianist Steve Anderson, bassist Steve Haines and drummer Ben Jensen - proves itself tasteful and artful, with Anderson uncorking several variegated solos along the way."
Short Bio:
GREGG GELB, tenor and alto saxophonist and clarinetist, composer and arranger, is a recipient of the Jazz Composers Fellowship Award from the North Carolina Arts Council.
He is founder and director of the Heart of Carolina Jazz Orchestra and Jazz Society, leader of the Gregg Gelb Swing Band, and co-founder and player with the North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra. He is producer of an annual concert and outreach series that presents top national jazz artists and through this he has performed with featured guest artists: Sonny Fortune, Fred Wesley, Byron Stripling, Rene Marie, Bud Shank, Joe Chambers, Harry Watters, T.K. Blue, Valery Ponomarev, Claudio Roditi, Mark Whitfield, Bill Charlap, Butch Thompson, and many others.
He teaches Introduction to Jazz online for Central Carolina Community College. He is a teacher for Arts Teach in the Charlotte/Mecklenberg Public Schools. He has a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, a Master of Music degree from the North Carolina School of the Arts, and a Bachelor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music.
Some more reviews:
"On gorgeous ballads like the jazz benchmark tune, "Body and Soul," or on a rocking blues earlier in the program, tenor work by Gregg Gelb simply shimmered into the microphone, with a full complement of technical flexibility and tasteful imagination."
Jack Dressler, The News and Courier, Charleston, SC
" The Gregg Gelb Swing Band’s ‘Let’s Face the Music’ is a marvelous reminiscence of the romantic and swing music during WW II,"
Carol Sloane, renowned jazz vocalist
"Authentic swing - a triangle mainstay for the past decade, the Gregg Gelb Swing Band, preceded the current revival of swing era music and styles by several years. The group is definitely more varied and substantive than fad bands such as Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Royal Crown Revue and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy."
Owen Cordle, Jazz Times and the Raleigh, NC News and Observer
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