Double Bass progressive yet approachable bigband repertoire

[jj.833]

Hi,
I'd like to extend my horizons of what today's bigband could play. We are playing mostly 'official town events', for financial reasons surely; we need to be approachable to the audience, we are playing mostly old swing classics, or singers' songs like this:


Nothing bad with this, many old songs are real treasures of course. Lately we added this song to our setlist:


I like this a lot, for it's easy to listen to and yet thrilling to play. I'm thinking there must be a lot of great stuff from 90s or newer, but it seem hard to find for me. Could you share your knowledge please?

 

[damonsmith]

You could check out the George Gruntz Concert band, the Vienna Art Orchestra, there are a few Sun Ra tunes that are pretty inside as well.

 

[Sean Riddle]

Carla Bley has a ton of great big band music.


Gil Evans is also a great resource

 

[Ed Goode]

Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band has some nice (relatable) charts, modern, fun and with great bass parts! We recently put this one into the rotation

 

[Ed Fuqua]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned the Vanguard Monday night (formerly the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis big band)....

 

[jj.833]

We've been playing Let the Good Times Roll by Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band:


Looks like everybody plays this version, I didn't find the original though. People love it. And it's a wonderful compendium of chromatic bass tricks