Trumpet Summit

Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington were (and are) two of the main stems of jazz. Any way you look at it, just about everything that's ever happened in this music leads directly – or indirectly – back to them. Both men were born on the cusp of the 19th and 20th centuries, and each became established as a leader during the middle '20s. Although their paths had crossed from time to time over the years, nobody in the entertainment industry had ever managed to get Armstrong and Ellington into a recording studio to make an album together. On April 3, 1961, producer Bob Thiele achieved what should be regarded as one of his greatest accomplishments; he organized and supervised a seven-and-a-half-hour session at RCA Victor's Studio One on East 24th Street in Manhattan, using a sextet combining Duke Ellington with Louis Armstrong & His All-Stars. This group included ex-Ellington clarinetist Barney Bigard, ex-Jimmie Lunceford swing-to-bop trombonist Trummy Young, bassist Mort Herbert, and drummer Danny Barcelona. A second session took place during the afternoon of the following day.

Here we have a summit meeting late in the careers of the pioneering titans of Afro-Cuban jazz: Dizzy Gillespie fronting the Machito orchestra on trumpet, with Mario Bauza as music director, alto saxophonist/clarinetist, and organizing force, and Chico O'Farrill contributing the compositions and arrangements. This could have been just a nostalgic retro gathering 25 years after the fact, but instead, these guys put forth an ambitious effort to push the boundaries of the idiom. The centerpiece is a 15-minute trumpet concerto for Gillespie called "Oro, Incienso y Mirra," where O'Farrill melts dissonant clusters, electric piano comping, and synthesizer decorations together with hot Afro-Cuban rhythms into a coherent, multi-sectioned tour de force…

As a composer and bandleader, trumpeter David Weiss is dedicated to the proposition that there are still new stories to be told from within the bebop tradition. The several collaborative bands he's spearheaded over the last three decades—including the superband, The Cookers—are towering examples, but none more personal to his voice than this ongoing Sextet. With longtime collaborators saxophonist Myron Walden and drummer EJ Strickland, and newer musical partners such as tenor saxophonist Nicole Glover and pianist David Bryant, Weiss creates expansive harmonic and rhythmic frameworks for the group to explore and summit. Intriguing melodies and virtuosic solos highlight this set of five originals, along with compositions from Freddie Hubbard and Slide Hampton.