Sophisticated Lady Jazz Quartet Vol.1 (LP, Yarlung)

Jerome Kern’s ‘I’m Old Fashioned’, an arrangement by bass player Gary Wicks, was the first piece played by the quartet several years ago and has become one of the quartet’s most requested tunes. By contrast, Andrew Boyle’s ‘Gone’, was a piece Yarlung commissioned and which Andrew presented to the quartet for the first time during this session. Gary surprised the group with his arrangement of Duke Ellington’s and Billy Strayhorn’s ‘Isfahan’, which was one of the first takes in Cammilleri Hall. ‘Sophisticated Lady’ is guided by JJ Kirkpatrick in a free improvisation on ‘Strange Fruit’, the Abel Meeropol melody made so famous by Billie Holiday, a song instrumental in civil rights progress in the U.S. in the mid-20th Century.The Sophisticated Lady jazz quartet pays homage to the Great Tradition of American jazz but most of their repertoire is written by members of the quartet. These tracks are complete takes, ‘live to tape’, without editing. The music on this recording is how Sophisticated Lady plays without the help of digital magic. Music cannot get fresher than this. When the members of Sophisticated Lady quartet first played in Cammilleri Hall their eyes lit up and excitement built. They responded to the beautiful sound in the hall immediately, and the acoustics enabled Yarlung to record this album with the characteristically minimalist approach. Recorded in the Brain and Creativity Institute’s Cammilleri Hall at USC, October 24-26, 2013.