A Sting You Won't Mind
“The Yellowjackets are very adept at reinventing... Any setting, any style, we know we can do it.”
This week, we’re taking a look at the jazz fusion band the Yellowjackets and some of the longstanding members of it. The Yellowjackets have been a recording/touring entity since 1980, releasing over twenty albums. While the personnel of the band has changed greatly over the years with former members including Peter Erskine, Terri Lyne Carrington, Felix Pastorius, and many others, keyboardist Russell Ferrante has been the one constant. The current iteration of the band features Ferrante, tenor sax giant Bob Mintzer, Dane Alderson on bass, and drummer Will Kennedy. The music from the band ranges from straight ahead offerings to some of the headiest fusion sounds from that sub-genre.
Some albums to check out:
Russell Ferrante (1952 - )
Pianist, keyboardist, and composer Russell Ferrante was born in San Jose, California. His early music exposure was church music, as his father was a church choir director; however, he got bit by the jazz bug at age fifteen through the recordings of John Coltrane and Miles Davis. His first important gigs were with blues/rock players, such as blues singer Jimmy Witherspoon and guitarist Robben Ford, with whom he toured, and his greatest fame came out of a group assembled from Ford’s studio sessions, the Yellowjackets.
Ferrante has also performed with Joni Mitchell, Bobby McFerrin, TAKE 6, Al Jarreau, and the GRP All-Star Big Band. In addition to performing, he conducts numerous clinics around the country, including at Berklee School of Music, and he is an associate professor at the U.S.C. Thornton School of Music.
Here is a song Ferrante wrote for the movie Barnyard, “Freedom is a Voice,” performed by Bobby McFerrin.
Bob Mintzer (1953 - )
Bob Mintzer is one of the leading voices on tenor saxophone, composing, and bandleading in our time. Trained at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, and the Manhattan School of Music, Mintzer was well-educated in classical clarinet, saxophone, and writing.
His first gigs of note were with Tito Puente and Eumir Deodato, and the Latin music created in these ensembles affected his playing/writing and led to successful collaborations with Eddie Palmieri and Mongo Santamaria.
In 1975, he joined the Buddy Rich Band, where he stayed for two and a half years as a featured soloist and writer, contributing many of the best charts offered by that ensemble during that time. While with Rich, he also wrote for Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. Following this, he joined the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra and Jaco Pastorius’ Word of Mouth Jazz Band.
Here is a song Mintzer wrote for the Buddy Rich band, “No Jive.”
In 1983, he formed his own big band which recorded on the label DMP. This association lasted for twenty-two years, garnering thirteen albums and one Grammy Award. The charts and recording style of these albums were groundbreaking and quite successful. Instead of having everyone in the ensemble with their own microphone, utilizing multi-tracking, and not even seeing one another, Mintzer recorded his albums with a single microphone, and the band set up in a circle around it. This live approach to recording broke the movement towards electronics and brought the thinking behind recording back to jazz's roots. His charts were very fresh--harmonically unique, they featured the finest players from NYC at the time. These charts became, and remain, pieces that are part of the canon taught to scholastic ensembles.
Listen to one of his more recent big band compositions, “Like A Child.”
In addition to his own ensemble, Mintzer's brilliant playing has been featured on a great deal of side sessions, with the likes of Steve Winwood, Aretha Franklin, James Taylor, Queen, and Diana Ross. In 1990, Mintzer joined the Yellowjackets and has remained a member of this heady fusion ensemble since. He is also on the faculty of the U.S.C. Thornton School of Music, and he and his wife live in the former home of composer Arnold Schoenberg.