Presence (featuring The Captain Black Big Band)

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The band’s third outing on CD features a set almost entirely written by band members and is crammed with energetic yet elegant arrangements, inventive melodies, rhythmic drive and bonkers solos... — BBC Music Magazine, January 2019, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 23rd Nov 2018
Catalogue No: SSR1805
Label: Smoke Sessions
Length: 77 minutes

Grammy Awards

61st Awards (2019)

Nominee: Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album

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The Scythe

Work length9:29

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Orrin Evans, Captain Black Big Band

Question

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Orrin Evans, Captain Black Big Band

Onward

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Orrin Evans, Captain Black Big Band

When It Comes

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Orrin Evans, Captain Black Big Band

Flip the Script

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Orrin Evans, Captain Black Big Band

Trams

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Orrin Evans, Captain Black Big Band

Answer

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Orrin Evans, Captain Black Big Band

Presence

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Orrin Evans, Captain Black Big Band

When It Comes (alternate take)

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Orrin Evans, Captain Black Big Band

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About

The big band's third album, Presence, is a celebration of the warmth and spirit of the elder Evans. An approach to not only music but life that Evans inherited directly from his parents.

"Presence" features a scaled-down 11-piece version of Evans' long-running big band, recorded live at a pair of venues in his hometown of Philadelphia.

The line-up features a core group of collaborators that the pianist tends to refer to as "a family" or "a village" more than a band. Most of the musicians on this recording have played with Captain Black for years, while many of them have contributed compositions and arrangements to the ensemble's ever-growing book. But the 11-piece band also represents a distillation of the larger ensemble, pared down to a close-knit core of players that know each other very well, can navigate the music with the spontaneity of a small band, and simply enjoy the experience of sharing the stage together.

"This is a real, raw and honest representation of what happened on stage on those nights." - Evans

Reviews

January 2019

The band’s third outing on CD features a set almost entirely written by band members and is crammed with energetic yet elegant arrangements, inventive melodies, rhythmic drive and bonkers solos and cadenzas in both likely and unlikely places, all corralled on a cleanly balanced recording that nonetheless captures all the atmosphere of its live origins.

March 2019

Troy Roberts’ funky ‘Trams’ sounds like The Crusaders gone experimental, and Josh Lawrence’s breezily swinging title-track shows how affectionately rooted in big-band traditions they are, for all the mischievous tweaking. This is not an immaculate big-band formation-dance, nor is it meant to be, but it’s an exciting marriage of tersely propulsive themes and maximum jamming potential.

November 2018

Recorded in two Philly clubs, this is Evans in hometown party mode, offering a spirit of openness and ease to the musical family that gave it to him first

Presence (featuring The Captain Black Big Band)

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