I first read about drummer Sherrie Maricle and her all-woman big band Diva in a column by Nat Hentoff, who raved about the group, which led me to its Web site to buy its 2002 CD "Live in Concert." Now I'm listening and relistening to "TNT: A Tommy Newsome Tribute" with Diva working music by composer and arranger Tommy Newsome of Tonight Show fame, another disk my buddy Carl Abernathy gave me for Xmas. (What Newsome and Diva do with "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top" is priceless.)
If you like big band music, you have to pick up something from Diva and either of the aforementioned disks will do. Put 'em in the big band era and these gals would have had a lot of other bands running scared. Put it another way, Chick Webb didn't have anything over on Maricle, as a drummer or a band leader. About the only complaint I have is that they place such an emphasis on stellar group play, and brief soloing in the context of it, that individual players I know could really let loose don't often get the chance. But that's really a compliment on my part, both to their skill as a group and individually.
2 comments:
Funny you should mention Diva now. I only discovered them a couple of weeks ago myself. They blew me away.
You should go back to their Web site and check out the video of their concert at New Trier High School in Winetka, Ill.
It appears to have been produced by students, so neither the video nor the sound are great, but they do a lot of stretching out. Great band, and some great charts too.
Best regards,
Skip Lombardi
Thanks Skip, I'll check it out.
I'd like to hear Sherrie Maricle and a quartet-quintet-sextet of her Diva teammates, kind of Jazz Messengers style.
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