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Monday Night Big Band with Kristin Korb at Malmo Live

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By Patrick Burnette
November 3, 2017
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Korb is a jazzy jazz singer, with lots of hip flourishes to her vocalizing... As a bass player, she comes out of the Ray Brown school (rather than, say, Richard Davis or Scott LaFaro).

Monday Night Big Band Featuring Kristin Korb
Malmo Live
Malmo, Sweden
October 30, 2017

The

Vanguard Jazz Orchestra

band / ensemble / orchestra

" data-original-title="" title="">Vanguard Jazz Orchestra recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. While its longevity is impressive, so is the wide-ranging the influence of the organization, which was started by

Thad Jones

trumpet
1923 - 1986

" data-original-title="" title="">Thad Jones and

Mel Lewis

drums
1929 - 1990

" data-original-title="" title="">Mel Lewis in the mid-sixties. In far-flung Malmo, Sweden, for instance, there is a Monday Night Jazz Band that, on some Monday nights at least, still plays Thad Jones tunes and accompanies a variety of visiting artists.

Monday, October 29, the Band featured bassist/vocalist

Kristin Korb

bass
b.1969

" data-original-title="" title="">Kristin Korb.

Esperanza Spalding

bass
b.1984

" data-original-title="" title="">Esperanza Spalding's Grammy win helped popularize this particular hybrid, but Korb was releasing albums when Spalding was in the Nickelodeon demographic, so she predated the hype. Korb is a fantastic musician who can play compelling baselines while singing along with the notes she is plucking, or, if she chooses, while singing an entirely different melodic strain.

Korb is a jazzy jazz singer, with lots of hip flourishes to her vocalizing. She's willing to try out harmonically daring ideas that don't land one-hundred percent of the time but demonstrate her inventiveness and ambition. As a bassist, she comes out of the

Ray Brown

bass, acoustic
1926 - 2002

" data-original-title="" title="">Ray Brown school (rather than, say,

Richard Davis

bass, acoustic
1930 - 2023

" data-original-title="" title="">Richard Davis or

Scott LaFaro

bass
1936 - 1961

" data-original-title="" title="">Scott LaFaro). In her frequent solos, she played with formidable technique but always in a communicative and rhythmically propulsive way. Her lines were clear. She never "mumbled" on the bass. Her profile in the States has probably not been enhanced by a move to Denmark, but she is well-worth catching on a gig or recording.

The evening's two highlights were a duet with the Monday Night band's bassist on Ray Brown's "This Bass Was Made for Walking" (there were punctuations from the band, but the focus was on the bassists) and a solo rendition of Green Dolphin Street where she played a highly technical but indelible riff rife with harmonics on the A section and sang and scatted the tune. It was a tour de force of split-brain thinking and highly musical to boot.

The Monday Night Big band is excellent, with any raggedness having less to do with musical than blocking issues (every soloist's trip to the solo mic stage front seemed fraught with danger). Sound was iffy. There was some nasty feedback when Korb's bass mic interfered with her vocal mic, and the amplification made the piano sound like a collection of metal bars being smashed when the excellent pianist ventured into the upper octaves. (This problem was somewhat tamed in the second set). All in all, it was an excellent set of music and introduced this reviewer to a very compelling double-threat who seems fully committed to her art rather than searching for ways to popularize or dilute it.

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Kristin Korb Concerts

Sep 26 Fri

Kristin Korb Trio: Eurythmics Vs. Jazz

BIX Jazzclub
Stuttgart, Germany

Sep 27 Sat

Kristin Korb Trio Ft. Craig Handy: Jazz Vs. Eurythmics

Jazz Bar Vogler
Munich, Germany

Sep 29 Mon

Kristin Korb Trio: Eurythmics Vs. Jazz

Ella & Louis
Mannheim, Germany

Oct 8 Wed

Kristin Korb

Coiled Wines
Garden City, ID

Oct 11 Sat

Rocky Mountain Jazz Collective Ft. Kristin Korb

Lockwood Performing Arts Center
Lockwood, MT

Oct 15 Wed

Kristin Korb Trio (ft. Dawn Clement And Jim White)

The Muse Performance Space
Lafayette, CO

Oct 18 Sat

Kristin Korb Trio

Let It Be
Waukesha, WI

Oct 23 Thu

Kristin Korb

Winter's Jazz Club
Chicago, IL

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