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The Colin Byrne Jazz Orchestra

Leaving for Home

TDCB 1306-01

Its members all recruited via an advertisement Colin Byrne placed on the jazzinleeds website, Big Band Byrne exists solely to play original music, and this album was recorded live at the Brudenell Social Club in June 2005.

A seventeen-piece outfit, on this outing they address a range of Byrne compositions, mostly straightforward flagwavers with lots of solo space, but some ('Demolition Baritone') incorporating passages of free-ish improvisation, others ('Time to Remind Me') experiments with the modal approach.

Whatever they're playing, though, the band exhibit an infectious enthusiasm both for each other's playing and for the material Byrne has provided for them, and the resulting album is a joyous celebration of big-band values: tight ensemble work, freewheeling solo features, punchy riff playing, fierce interaction between sections.

Pastel shades, complex rhythms, unusual textures are mostly eschewed; this is not a Maria Schneider-type big band, but a thoroughly unpretentious, good-time aggregation of like-minded souls looking to entertain audiences and themselves, and judging by the reaction of the crowd on this recording, they should be experienced live for maximum effect.