A Crisp, Swinging Sound From Wilson’s Mini Big Band

Composing music for a large jazz ensemble can be a quixotic enterprise. Employment opportunities for quintets are not exactly proliferating, and booking an engagement for a 15-piece band generally means that each of the players is going to receive a tiny paycheck.

Guitarist-composer Anthony Wilson--the son of veteran big band leader Gerald Wilson--has been aware of these problems since he first picked up an instrument. Yet he has been irresistibly drawn to composing music for combinations that offer more expressive potential than basic trios, quartets and quintets.

Recognizing the difficulties, however, he has focused his efforts upon a nine-piece mini big band he calls the Anthony Wilson Nonette. With a lineup that consists of five horns and a four-piece rhythm section, rather than the typical 13 horns and rhythm of the usual big band instrumentation, Wilson has the potential for a big sound from a manageable number of players.

Even so, gigs are hard to come by. On Monday at the Jazz Bakery, in the first set of a two-night run, Wilson led his ensemble before a minimal audience in the first performance by the Nonette in nearly a year.

And it’s a shame the Jazz Bakery wasn’t overflowing with listeners. Wilson’s charts made colorful use of the group’s spare instrumentation, often employing his guitar as an adjunct to the horn lines, frequently taking advantage of the doubling capabilities within his three-man saxophone section.

In his own “Idle Blues,” for example, the clarinet of Jeff Clayton and the bass clarinet of Jack Nimitz added texture and color to a collective sound at times reminiscent of Duke Ellington. In his arrangement of Lucky Thompson’s “The Parisian Knights,” Wilson drove the catchy theme with unison lines and brass outbursts, somehow managing to make his minimalist ensemble sound like a big band on the loose.

Most of the soloing was first rate, especially Clayton’s Cannonball Adderley-inspired alto saxophone efforts, Ira Nepus’ riff-driven trombone work, the busy tenor saxophone lines of Pete Christlieb and the thoughtful piano work of Donald Vega.

The Wilson Nonette proffered an entertaining evening of crisp, swinging jazz. And Wilson deserves an enormous amount of credit for continuing, despite the hazards, to make the case for the pleasures of the large (in his case, the mini-large) jazz ensemble.