Uptown Lowdown

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It took a German recording team to enable trumpeter/arranger Randy Sandke to assemble this all-American, 12-piece ensemble for a panorama of New York-inspired tunes, recorded in the Big Apple in the Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse as part of the 1999 JVC Jazz Festival. In doing so, he raided the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, as well as several independent history-minded players in the area, and emerged with a band that fires off the numbers with crisp virtuosity in any idiom called for. Thankfully, there is also more than enough gusto in the playing, due in no small part to the live festival recording situation. The Harlem Medley, a lengthy leadoff stream of delicacies from the land of Ellingtonia, gets close enough to the Ellington sound to convey the idea without being slavishly imitative or ghostly. The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra boys know their Ellington craft well and apply the plunger mutes accordingly. From there, the band doubles back to Dixieland, works its way up to swing, and slides without a glitch into bebop (Scrapple From the Apple), a Mingus shuffle blues (Nostalgia in Times Square), transitional Coltrane (Grand Central), and some Monk (52nd Street Theme), before being deposited back in Harlem by -- naturally -- the 'A' Train. In between the main tour stops, Concord Jazz teammates guitarist Howard Alden and clarinetist Ken Peplowski serve up another of their fluid duets on Irving Berlin's Slumming on Park Avenue. Other high points include clarinetist Allan Vache wailing in the trad flagwaver Chinatown and trumpeters Sandke and Warren Vache duking it out on 42nd Street. In all, a well-recorded souvenir of what sounds like a heartwarming local celebration. ~ Richard S. Ginell, Rovi