In honor of their 35th anniversary, San Francisco’s Swing Fever has teamed up with OpenArt Productions to produce Grandmasters of Jazz. This CD/DVD features Swing Fever joined by jazz icons Clark Terry, Buddy DeFranco and Terry Gibbs, as well as guest vocalist Jackie Ryan. The audio CD is a compilation of recordings of Swing Fever accompanied by each of the Grandmasters in the period of 1998 to 2001. Fourteen of the 19 tracks on the audio CD are live performances that took place at the start of the new millennium. The collection boasts a mixture of swing, bebop and ballads, and also includes anecdotes between tracks from Terry, DeFranco and Gibbs as they share, what a press release describes as “war stories from the jazz trenches.” The collection also includes a 20-page booklet equipped with notes by Will Friedwald, artist bios, 27 photos and two DVDs complete with rare footage and additional songs.
Originally Published