In 1965, Duke Ellington asked, by way of an album title, Will the Big Bands Ever Come Back? They never completely left, but the point is taken. The ensuing sixty years haven’t brought back broad popularity or the support needed to maintain a large jazz ensemble. Exceptions only prove the point. In 2015, Canadian composers Anna Webber and Angela Morris, both saxophonists, joined forces to launch a big band in New York City, confronting not just the economics but the infrastructure of stages that won’t support a cast of nineteen players. They released a well-received debut in 2020, and return five years later with the double LP Unseparate.
The meticulous compositions and arrangements on Unseparate are complex and sophisticated, notably Webber’s four-part, twenty-six-minute Just Intonation Etudes for Big Band. The ensemble heart beats in Morris’ noir-ish Microchimera. And both contribute fragments to the titular suite, sprinkled across the seventy-minute play time. The newest players in the lineup—which has largely stayed the same—are vibraphonist Patricia Brennan and pianist Marta Sánchez, both valued in the NYC scene. Longtime member Dustin Carlson, whose electric guitar is the band’s secret weapon, opens up only occasionally with a searing solo. What was an ambitious endeavour a decade (or even six decades) ago is no less so today. It’s great to see Webber/Morris still at it, all the better to hear them top themselves.
Kurt Gottschalk is an author, journalist, and broadcaster based in New York City. His work appears in publications in North America and Europe, including Bachtrack, The New York City Jazz Record, The Red Hook Star-Revue, Stereophile, and The Wire and he can be heard on WKCR-FM and WFMU-FM.