Ed Palermo Big Band

The Ed Palermo Big Band is a proper big band – all the horns! – but they love nothing more than taking classic rock and pop tunes and making some hybrid/novelty work out of them. The catalogue of Frank Zappa is really where the Palermo Band made its name and proved it had incredible skill and other dynamic writers of weirdly modulating songs have been a source of inspiration too: Todd Rundgren, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, The Beatles – and jazz giants Wayne Shorter and Miles Davis.

A couple of years ago on a double volume the band explored a bunch of late 60s “British Explosion” pop tunes. And now they’re back with Vol. III. It’s very Beatles-focused (Within You Without You, Run For Your Life, Strawberry Fields, And Your Bird Can Sing, Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite, Fixing A Hole) but leaves room for material also by Procol Harum, Thunderclap Newman, Traffic, Moody Blues and Jethro Tull.

The opening trio of Beatles tunes feels like the start of a symphony – violin drenching Strawberry Fields is wonderful, but the horns really come alive on Traffic’s Glad.

Palermo’s arrangements are exquisite – allowing for dizzying sax solos and strong lead piano lines to never blur, to always define. The 16 instrumentalists combine to make for a musical super-muscle.

Now of course this is not going to be for everyone. Big band is its own genre and automatically rules out a bunch of people – then there are the big band purists that might find this to be some sort of sacrilege. But if Zappa’s fusion of jazz and rock was ever your thing then you’re going to want to hear this – it almost feels like the territory he might have moved into, as solely a composer/conductor/arranger, had he lived on into his sixties and beyond.

For all the Beatles wizardry here – those glorious tunes being re-energised once again, all but rewritten in fact, I love the closing version of Nights in White Satin. This is a song that was heavily orchestral to begin with – and here its opening mood is obliterated and the re-take is astounding. Horns blasting forward, a driving big band rhythm dominating but that searing vocal melody lives on through the saxophones.

Really extraordinary playing. Something I don’t want to listen to all the time – but I’m glad its there for me, for when I do.
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