Metropolis (1927)

Peter Graham is one of the leading brass band composers of his generation, and the first outside the US to win the American Bandmasters Associations prestigious Ostwald Award for composition. Black Dyke Band celebrates his 60th birthday with this recording, the theme of which derives from Grahams time in New York and from some of the giants of American culture. On the Shoulders of Giants pays tribute to great brass virtuosi such as Miles Davis and John Philip Sousa; New York Movie is a musical narrative on seven of Edward Hoppers iconic, haunting paintings; and Metropolis 1927 takes its inspiration from the dystopian beauty of Fritz Langs classic science fiction film.

Although this is technically the third volume in the Classics Bix Beiderbecke chronology, close examination reveals that volumes three and four retrace a timeline already traversed by the earlier installments, resulting in a reshuffled, non-linear progression that is atypical of the Classics Chronological Series yet seems oddly appropriate for an authentically surreal character like Beiderbecke. This volume follows a timeline from November 18, 1927 to April 22, 1928. Because the producers of this series ladled most of the "Bix & Tram" collaborations into the Frankie Trumbauer portion of their label's catalog, the entire Classics "Bixology" initially fit into two volumes (issued in 1996) with two additional volumes (issued in 2002) documenting Beiderbecke's tenure as a sideman with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra during the years 1927-1929…