(2018-12-31) Theyre Doing It Out Of Love The Big Band Rises Again

"They're Doing It Out of Love": The Big Band Rises Again. There are plenty to choose from these days. Quietly, beneath the radar of even most jazz lovers, the big band has been charging back. For a long time, the large ensemble has seemed a clunky vestige of American music’s past — outmoded since bebop supplanted swing in the 1950s — but a bumper crop of enterprising, conservatory-trained composers sees it differently: as a vessel of grandiose possibility

A frequent face in the Slope Lounge audience is Darcy James Argue, a bandleader whose Secret Society — a large ensemble with a dark-hued, rock-inflected sound — is now renowned in the jazz world.

But young musicians are finding ways to adapt. “It seems like no matter what, the possibilities of writing for big band are so musically irresistible that people keep finding a way to make it work,” Mr. Argue said. “Which is really inspiring.”

Mr. Argue ran through all the large-ensemble shows featuring young bandleaders taking place that week. He counted four. None was at a typical jazz club. Big bands are notoriously difficult to maintain: Aside from the challenge of corralling 16 or 18 musicians at once, a band fee can all but disappear when dispersed that widely. And clubs are reluctant to book the unwieldy ensembles

Her group, the Erica Seguine & Shannon Baker Jazz Orchestra, has become something of a regular presence on this stage in Park Slope, where the saxophonist Joshua Schneider books a different jazz orchestra every Monday night.