Album Notes

The Old School Swing Band is a group of musicians dedicated to performing traditional and swing jazz in the style of the early masters. Inspired by the recordings of jazz history, the group tries to reinterpret the traditional music of the genre, bringing a fresh perspective to its performance with novel arrangements and creative combinations of musicians and musical expressions.

"Old School Swing," the namesake of the ensemble, is the early style of swing music, before the big band sound popularized during WW II, back when "swing" meant only how the music was performed, rhythmically and stylistically. The ideas expressed in the early recordings of artists like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, Sindey Bechet, Hoagy Carmichael, Chick Webb, Django Reinhardt, Gene Krupa, Eddie Lang, Joe "King" Oliver, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, James P. Johnson, Stephane Grapelli and Fats Waller, among others, have become the guiding inspiration of the Old School Swing Band. These masters all created music that celebrates the ensemble sound, the rhythmic groove and highlights the individual talents of composer, lyricist and music maker.

Following in their footsteps, the Old School Swing Band combines the ideas, sounds and repertoire of these early innovators with the broad spectrum of jazz music as it is presented today. Whether in the confines of a single jazz jam session or in the over-arching motif of maintaining and passing on the musical tradition, the Old School Swing Band has committed itself to the basic process of jazz: fully listening to what other musicians say, developing existing ideas into new ones and, ultimately, adding to the tradition of sound by creatively commenting back on foundational musical elements.