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Marcus Shelby Orchestra - Transitions (2019)

Posted By: varrock
Marcus Shelby Orchestra - Transitions (2019)

Marcus Shelby Orchestra - Transitions (2019)
WEB FLAC (tracks) - 334 MB | Tracks: 11 | 52:15 min
Style: Jazz | Label: Marcus Shelby Orchestra

Bassist, composer, and bandleader Marcus Shelby brings together three of his greatest passions—African-American history, baseball, and big-band jazz—on Transitions, the latest work by his 15-piece Marcus Shelby Orchestra, set for a June 7 release on his own MSO Records. While the album offers Shelby’s lush arrangements of classic tunes by Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, and Cole Porter, its centerpiece “Black Ball: The Negro Leagues and the Blues” is an original four-part suite inspired by the history of Negro League Baseball. It also features superb work by two special guests, violinist Mads Tolling and acclaimed vocalist Tiffany Austin.

Shelby’s work to date has established his penchant for deep musical dives into African-American history and culture. Transitions is not a full-length opus like his 2007 oratorio Harriet Tubman or 2011’s Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but it is unquestionably on the same ambitious path as those two works. It’s also a natural choice of subject matter for San Francisco-based Shelby, a self-described baseball aficionado who (when he’s not on the bandstand) can often be found cheering on his beloved San Francisco Giants.

“I did a whole theatrical project that premiered last September at the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival,” he explains. “It re-created the environment of a Negro League baseball park. This suite was inspired by the research I did for that project. But it’s more about these four cities—Pittsburgh, New York, Chicago, Kansas City—that were very central to the Negro Leagues.”

Those were also central to the development of jazz, and Shelby’s pieces reflect the parts they played in that development. The suite’s opening “Transition 1 (Pittsburgh),” a nod to two powerhouse teams (the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Homestead Grays), also reflects the city’s blues tradition and the hard swing generated by native-son drummers from Art Blakey to Jeff “Tain” Watts. Its finale, “Black Ball Swing (Kansas City),” celebrates the Kansas City Monarchs—“the best known, most respected team of all time in the Negro Leagues,” Shelby says—with both the riff-driven style of the Count Basie Orchestra and the supercharged bebop of Charlie Parker, both Kansas City exports.

Transitions also includes one composition each by Charles Mingus and George Shearing, along with two by Cole Porter and three by the grand master of big band writing, Duke Ellington. It’s “an album that mirrors a live performance,” he says. “It’s like seeing one of our concerts. It felt good to break away from doing programmatic music to playing some straight-up blues and swing and standards.” The Duke’s gorgeous but rarely played “On a Turquoise Cloud” is a feature for guest violinist Tolling, while his “Mood Indigo” and “Solitude,” along with Shearing’s “Lullaby of Birdland” and the two Porter tunes, are vehicles for Tiffany Austin’s vocals.

Marcus Shelby was born February 2, 1966 in Anchorage, Alaska, moving to Sacramento, California at the age of five. He played the bass as a teenager, but his real passion was for baseball and basketball, earning a college scholarship in the latter. At 22, however, a concert by the Wynton Marsalis Quartet reignited his love of music, and he returned to school at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, where he studied with Charlie Haden and James Newton.

First gaining attention in Los Angeles as a cofounder (with drummer Willie Jones III) of the hard-bop band Black/Note in the early 1990s, Shelby relocated to San Francisco in 1996. He quickly established himself as an essential creative force on the Bay Area arts scene, leading both the Marcus Shelby Trio and the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra and earning increasingly prestigious commissions from dance companies, theatrical productions, and presenters.

Shelby opened a new chapter with the release of 2006’s Port Chicago (Noir), a major orchestral work inspired by the World War II incident that saw 50 young black seamen convicted in the largest mutiny trial in U.S. naval history. Since then he’s focused his creative energy on a series of meticulously researched, hard-swinging works exploring African American history, like 2007’s Harriet Tubman (Noir) and 2011’s Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Porto Franco).

Tracklist:

01. Remember Rockefeller at Attica
02. On a Turquoise Cloud
03. Begin the Beguine
04. Lullaby of Birdland
05. In My Solitude
06. It's All Right with Me
07. Transition I (Pittsburg)
08. Transition II (New York)
09. Barnstormin' (Chicago)
10. Black Ball Swing (Kansas City)
11. Mood Indigo



FILE: 01. Remember Rockefeller at Attica.flac
Size: 24647702 Hash: 9C8CEB7E0804594051CFC9412E56BB95 Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: E1D17F139BA930F1A73B10BD58CEE4BAF9E78BFB
FILE: 02. On a Turquoise Cloud.flac
Size: 18222663 Hash: 9EECCEE136F5157B30B09DA2F966C19E Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 06DB8DD19641060B406D62F2A46E00E6D1027B93
FILE: 03. Begin the Beguine.flac
Size: 23564607 Hash: E94FEB7A2DDDE6D92809E6E7F9499407 Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: A335941A657A8454F2FC5821B9942E483F99B23B
FILE: 04. Lullaby of Birdland.flac
Size: 30958450 Hash: 0D289723AE6EE1B33A15BF9574CCF43C Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 826834E31BC4B0C8EFAC7F08874FE7BB58E4A156
FILE: 05. In My Solitude.flac
Size: 48865407 Hash: 642BAE5ECBAA78172C9635375BA86E35 Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 249BE76F7B9A4B571A638E362C9758AEF4B5435C
FILE: 06. It's All Right with Me.flac
Size: 21203838 Hash: DE03B88F2B3CB8BA292A145D408D4D68 Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 22B8B837C2CA02858AD15F61CDCB94610052824C
FILE: 07. Transition I (Pittsburg).flac
Size: 43521938 Hash: 8887C93F77778C6CF6C2C41B067D4CDF Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: F6E1794BD1FF51D7A12A297156CE6E1E7C5C46A2
FILE: 08. Transition II (New York).flac
Size: 36318091 Hash: E19C70D964C40B0331B45D11FCF5257F Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 99%
Signature: 65F192F01A71A3B34E9F4A4F4E41C9E222037D48
FILE: 09. Barnstormin' (Chicago).flac
Size: 43758472 Hash: BAB07D111CB31B70951AB612206B0281 Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: F3A752F5C5AF185BEAE193B5EF48757159A207C7
FILE: 10. Black Ball Swing (Kansas City).flac
Size: 40352048 Hash: 94D07393B257A75F537EC93AEC633B07 Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 21F134FCDD6F75E8B8CBC82F54AB590B82867B81
FILE: 11. Mood Indigo.flac
Size: 19340317 Hash: 621C1B99BD7136619891BA32731AD107 Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 1EB7B7B90F1BE58343740141890513104317AF0A