Big Band Tribute Will Be ‘Blowin’ Up a Storm’ in May

With tributes to artists ranging from Duke Ellington and Count Basie to Gerry Mulligan and Thad Jones, KLON-FM’s “Blowin’ Up a Storm,” May 23-26 at the Redondo Beach Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza hotel, will be a feast for big band devotees.

Music written by or for the bands of Ellington, Basie, Mulligan, Jones, Jay McShann, Stan Kenton, Woody Herman, Boyd Raeburn, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, Gil Evans, Terry Gibbs, Louie Bellson, Bill Holman, Toshiko Akiyoshi and others will be presented in 16 concerts, some of which will be at the famed Avalon Casino on Catalina Island.

The ensembles will be fronted mostly by players associated with the featured writer or leader. For instance, Bill Berry, who played with Ellington in the early ‘60s, will lead a program of rarely heard material from the Duke. He will be joined by other ex-Ellingtonians such as Clark Terry and Britt Woodman. Pete Rugulo will conduct some never-before-recorded material by the Kenton band. Modern Jazz Quartet pianist John Lewis will front a band playing music written by Tadd Dameron and Chico O’Farrill for Gillespie’s big band, of which Lewis was an original member.

Also on hand will be Johnny Coles, a longtime associate of the great Evans, who will be one of several trumpeters performing arrangements that Evans wrote for Miles Davis. Among them are songs on the albums “Porgy and Bess” and “Sketches of Spain.” Holman, Bob Brookmeyer and Manny Albam will lead a tribute, which they all wrote, to Mulligan’s Concert Jazz Band. And Akiyoshi will front a reunion of the band she led in Los Angeles from 1972 to 1982.

Among the other expected participants are Gerald Wilson, John LaPorta, Billy Harper, Lew Tabackin and Norris Turney, trumpeters Conte Candoli and Bobby Shew and drummer Louie Bellson.

Producer Ken Poston and consultant-arranger Mark Masters have done extensive research, gathering mostly original arrangements from sources such as the Smithsonian Institution, the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University and the late Mulligan. “This will not be a re-creation of recordings but rather an exposure to the literature of jazz, a living, breathing thing that continues,” Poston said.

Full registration for all four days’ events, which also include films from the Mark Cantor archives and panel discussions, are on sale at $300. For information, call (310) 985-1686. Single event tickets will go on sale in a week.

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Benefits: Jack Sheldon’s big band, singer Sue Raney, the Four Freshmen and the Page Cavanaugh trio play a benefit March 11 at 8 p.m. for guitar great Barney Kessel, who suffered a stroke two years ago. The concert, at the Warner Center Marriott Hotel (21560 Oxnard St., Woodland Hills), helps pay for Kessel’s therapy to regain speech and motor abilities. Tickets, $25 to $125. Information: (213) 682-4101.

Contributions are being accepted to help Les McCann with medical bills and physical therapy after a stroke the pianist-singer suffered last year that left the right side of his body paralyzed. Checks may be sent to the Les McCann Fund, Bank of Montecito, 1000 State St., Santa Barbara, CA 93101.