Dave Gelly 

Ed Puddick Big Band: Guys & Dolls – review

Young British arranger Ed Puddick has come up with some surprising new angles on jazz's favourite musical, writes Dave Gelly
  
  


Just when you thought that the possibilities of the standard big-band format had finally been exhausted, along comes something like this. Probably more than any other musical, Guys and Dolls has been quarried by jazz musicians on account of its jazz-friendly tunes, but Ed Puddick, a young British arranger with a flair for finding unusual angles, has come up with 13 genuinely fresh treatments. From "Fugue for Tinhorns", with three manic trumpets chasing one another around, to the sobbing bass clarinet in "Adelaide's Lament", it's full of surprises. There are no big names among the musicians, but at times the playing is quite stupendous.

 

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