Jittrbug.net
  • Home
  • News
  • Blog
  • Screenplay
  • Jitterbug! Songwriting Team & Creative Directors
  • Music
  • The Story
  • The Dramaturgy Behind The Story
  • Jitterbug Dance Origins
  • Get Your Choreography Right Here!
  • Map of historic locations in play
  • Playwright
  • The Director
  • The Choreographer
  • Jitterbug! NYC Pixs
  • Emerging Artists Theatre (EAT)
  • Tada! Youth Theatre
  • National Black Theatre
  • The National Black Theatre Cast
  • Follow-up to the NBT radio reading
  • Books
  • Educator Resources
  • Royalties
  • Everything Jitterbug! Store
  • Gallery
  • Contact

The "Sound of Surprise": The Savory Collection

10/3/2016

0 Comments

 

Ken Burns on the Savory Collection from Nation

PictureNational Jazz Museum in Harlem
The magic of jazz improvisation was what Whitney Balliett called "the sound of surprise." He was the longtime jazz reviewer for the New Yorker. Thanks to the epic work by Loren Schoenberg, the founder and chief historian at theNational Jazz Museum in Harlem, this tiny "museum that could"-- after a 30-year search-- is releasing through Apple Music the long lost 1930s-thru-early-40's radio broadcast jazz recordings made by legendary pioneering sound engineer Bill Savory.

This is the "sound of surprise" for the Jitterbug! team since The Savory Collection touches upon the historical underpinnings of the dancical's music and story which are set in 1930's Harlem. And the Cotton Club where some of the earliest live national radio broadcasts were made.

The Savory Collection, a treasure trove of over 1,000 proprietary discs and hundreds of hours of music, is built on the revolutionary recording techniques developed by Savory. Instead of using standard discs suitable for 78rpm records, he used larger discs and recorded at a slower speed. This allowed for longer recordings and encouraged improvisation by jazz musicians. Although the discs were discovered in 2010, it has taken this long to catalog, restore, and remaster them for the collection's first digital release on October 14th 
: The Savory Collection, Volume I-- Body and Soul: Coleman Hawkins & Friends. This first volume features one of the best examples of what Savory's technique allowed: the increased length of Coleman Hawkins' signature piece Body and Soul.

For us, however, it's knowing that this first volume includes music by members of the Jitterbug! "Creative Team:" Ella Fitzgerald, Chick Webb, and Fats Waller
(who also have parts in the dancical!). 

Congratulations to the National Jazz Museum in Harlem (which is smack dab in the middle of where most of the action takes place in the play-- just south of the legendary Lafayette Theatre and north of the long forgotten Plantation Club and not too far away from the long gone Savoy Ballroom and Cotton Club). We look forward to future releases.
 

You can learn more about this epic journey and hear the Coleman Hawkins recording here.




 

​

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    DC Copeland

    Multi-hyphenate with a penchant for writing.

    Archives

    December 2022
    October 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    February 2022
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    December 2020
    September 2020
    May 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    February 2015
    January 2015
    January 2013
    July 2012

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.