Straight-ahead and swinging big band bebop cd voted in top 10 cds of the year in 2002 in south American jazz polls featuring compositions and arrangements by mike longo. originals as well as standards.

9 MP3 Songs
JAZZ: Big Band, BLUES: Jazzy Blues



Details:
Exploring rhythmic and melodic zones not only frees the improvisor from pre-conceived licks that don't swing, it also profoundly affects the way the composer/arranger hears and writes. Mike Longo has been playing in that zone for a long, long time: as a teenager with Cannonball Adderley, as a young piano student of Oscar Peterson, and finally as a mature artist with lifelong associations with Dizzy Gillespie and James Moody. His composition and arranging role models are equally profound: fellow Gillespie alum Lalo Shifrin, Quincy Jones, the great Benny Carter, Don Sebesky, Thad Jones, Gil Evans, and of course Dizzy and Gil Fuller. With such strong, deep influences and a hyperawareness of rhythmic and harmonic subtlety,
Mike writes some pretty amazing stuff.

Matt Snyder