Palermo, Ed - The Adventures Of Zodd Zundgren
SKU
Rune 440
"...this ace arranger is dead serious about his song-renovations, striving for exceptional music that contains levels of technical resourcefulness and emotional exposition associated with premium jazz." – DownBeat
The Ed Palermo Big Band combines two unlikely American masters with The Adventures of Zodd Zundgren, a dizzying and ingenious reinvention of music by Todd Rundgren and Frank Zappa, two much-loved but drastically different American rock composers.
Ed Palermo may have gained an international following with his ingenious orchestral arrangements of Frank Zappa tunes, but he’s hardly a one-trick pony. Earlier in the year the saxophonist released an uproarious and hugely acclaimed double album The Great Un-American Songbook Volumes 1 & 2, a project celebrating an expansive roster of songs by successive waves of music by the British invasion. With his new big band project, Palermo is back on his home turf, but the landscape feels strange and uncanny. He’s reclaiming the Zappa songbook, filtering Frank through the emotionally charged lens of the polymathic musical wizard Todd Rundgren in a wild and wooly transmogrification. Palermo somehow captures the essence of these iconoclastic masters, making Zappa Zappier and Todd more Rundgrenian.
The seamless ease with which Palermo and his crack crew navigate between the Zappa and Rundgren shouldn’t come as a surprise. Over the years Zappa’s music has proven supremely pliable in Palermo’s capable hands; everything he brings into the big band is a labor of love for him. “Todd Rundgren holds a very special place in my heart,” Palermo says. “It was about 2 years ago doing our regular appearances at The Falcon that I decided to have Zodd Zundgren night. A lot of people who like the music of Zappa also like Rundgren and Steely Dan, but there are alreadt enough Steely Dan cover bands out there...”
While Palermo has written more than 300 Zappa charts, he’s cast an increasingly wide net for material. Recent releases like 2014’s Oh No! Not Jazz!! and 2016’s One Child Left Behind featured a bountiful selection of his original compositions and material by composers not named Frank Zappa.
Nothing demonstrates the ensemble’s ongoing vitality better than the stellar cast of players, with most of the players being longtime collaborators; many of these top-shelf musicians have been in the band for more than a decade, and they bring wide ranging experience, expert musicianship and emotional intensity to Palermo’s music.
- LabelCuneiform
- UPC045775044026