Young German, Southland Pros Join in Love of Big Band

Leading a big band can be one of the more quixotic activities in contemporary jazz. Neither the economics nor the overall audience interest provide particularly favorable possibilities for such an enterprise. Which explains why most big jazz bands are labors of love, by both the leaders and the musicians--assemblages that come together, often in jazz clubs on off nights solely for the sheer joy of playing together.

Trumpeter/arranger Chris Walden is one of the big band believers, a bit surprisingly, perhaps, since he is a 34-year-old German from Hamburg who makes his living as a film composer. But, as the performance of his 17-piece big band made clear at Catalina Bar & Grill Thursday night, his creative energies are equally focused upon writing and arranging for a large jazz ensemble.

It was a prime group of Southland professionals, with featured soloing from such excellent players as saxophonists Kim Richmond, Rob Lockart and Danny House, guitarist Mitch Holder, pianist Alan Broadbent and others. Playing with precision, investing their rhythmic flow with a thrusting forward momentum, they delivered with an enthusiasm that belied their relatively rare opportunities to perform together.

But the real star of the evening was Walden’s writing, which ranged from arrangements of “Stolen Moments” and “Here’s That Rainy Day” to the theme from “Star Wars.” Traditional big jazz band instrumentation, with its balanced sections of trumpets, trombones, saxophones and rhythm, has been explored by so many gifted artists over the last 80-plus years that it can be difficult for even the most talented orchestrator to find new sonorities. And there were times in Walden’s charts in which craft, rather than imagination, seemed dominant. But there also were passages in which he managed the rare achievement of producing extremely personal sounds: one in which he combined four fluegelhorns with the four trombones to produce gorgeous brass textures; others in which the entire collection of horns swung together as the rhythm section laid out; and still other tonal combinations using complex harmonic voicings to produce orchestral-like timbres.

The Walden Big Band was joined in the latter part of the set by singer Sabine Hettlich, a tall, slender woman with a style strikingly reminiscent of Barbra Streisand. Although the small area in front of the band was far too small to contain her energies, Hettlich--who starred in a German production of “Cats”--clearly indicated that she is a performer with potential reaching well beyond the jazz arena.