Browse by Artist: HO AND THE GREEN MONSTER BIG BAND, FRED

Artist:	HO AND THE GREEN MONSTER BIG BAND, FRED
Title:	Celestial Green Monster
Label:	MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	MUTABLE 001CD

"On the new release Celestial Green Monster, Fred Ho and the Green Monster Big Band -- assembled from Ho's favorite musicians with whom he had the pleasure and honor to work with since embarking upon a professional career in music in the 1980s -- perform both original compositions by Ho ('Liberation Genesis'; 'Blues to the Freedom Fighters'; 'The Struggle for a New World Suite') as well as arrangements of two pop culture classics ('Spiderman Theme'; 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida'). The quintessential American orchestra is not the symphony, but the big band. Retaining the essential features of swing and African-descended rhythmic vitality and complexity, improvisation (both individual and collective) with sophisticated compositional imagination, elasticity and experimentation with timbre and harmony, expansive and epic themes, the big band makes for as much a 'joyful noise' as the ubiquitous small band. Though the composer/arranger may start with sketches and minimally notated material, the opportunity and challenge for a broader and more extensive palette of orchestral voicing, contrapuntal techniques (both melodically and rhythmically), and magnified excitement, intensity, energy and explosive dynamic range ('from a whisper to a scream') continually make for the big band form an ideal vehicle of serious extended composition." The Green Monster Big Band: Fred Ho, leader/baritone sax; Bobby Zankel, Jim Hobbs, alto sax; Hafez Modirzadeh, Salim Washington, tenor sax; Stanton Davis, Brian Kilpatrick, Amir Elsaffar, trumpet; Taylor Ho Bynum, cornet; Robert Pilkington, Marty Wehner, Richard Harper, trombone; Earl MacIntyre, David Harris, contrabass trombone; Art Hirahara, piano, electronic keyboard; Wes Brown, electric and acoustic bass; Royal Hartigan, drum set. Guest Artists on In A Gadda Da Vida: Abraham Gomez-Delgado and Haleh Abghari (vocals); Mary Halvorson (electric guitar).

Artist:	HO AND THE GREEN MONSTER BIG BAND, FRED
Title:	The Sweet Science Suite
Label:	MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	MUTABLE 003CD

Subtitled: A Scientific Soul Music Honoring Of Muhammad Ali. "During the war against advanced colo-rectal cancer (from 2006), which included two primary tumors and two recurrences, Fred Ho, hammered by massive chemo and radiation, found inspiration in the fight for his life from watching movies of The Greatest, Muhammad Ali. Ali's bold, militant, defiant and spirited resistance to the forces of American racism, combined with his elan, grace and humor (both poetical and personal), his indisputable athletic abilities and genius, and the inspiration to the world's peoples (especially the oppressed) and their embrace of him, served as constant inspiration to Fred Ho. During one of his recovery periods, Ho decided to compose a work for his Green Monster Big Band to honor The Greatest. The Sweet Science Suite is a musical evocation of that mojo conjured through Afro Asian scientific soul music, combining the swing of jazz and American and Asian boxing, martial arts and hand-to-hand combat feels and forms, with the elasticity of temperament and pitch intrinsic to the raw, folk musical characteristics of AfroAmerica and much of the Asiatic world. During Ali's match against the juggernaut George Foreman in Zaire during the mid-1970s, Ali's employ of the rope-a-dope was the quintessential methodology of the trickster, intrinsic to many Asian martial arts, such as JuJitSu, of turning the strength of one's opponent against them. This work of five movements spans the musical geography of the Black and Yellow worlds, just as Ali spanned those two worlds in his boxing training and abilities, and in turn inspired and influenced martial forms and techniques, including the footwork of the late great martial arts innovator and iconoclast, Bruce Lee."

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