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Gene Perla
“Bill’s Waltz”
www.billswaltz.com

Now this is an interesting story! Apparently, Gene Perla brought Elvin Jones into a recording studio in ’86 with the concept of completely isolating his drums and orchestrating music to his drum parts later. They recorded a handfull of Gene’s tunes together and… long story short, in 2007 the music was arranged & orchestrated and recorded by the NDR BigBand (one of the best) in Hamburg, Germany and performed to Elvin’s drum tracks! There are also some previously recorded percussion overdubs by Don Alias, but the rest has been added to the percussion/drum tracks two decades after the fact and the result? It’s pretty amazing!

You’d never know that this music was added to the drum parts 21 years after the fact and now we get to hear ELVIN JONES with the NDR BIGBAND! How cool is that?

The music (as you’d expect) swings hard and the soloists are as good as they get… this band is truly a wonder. Elvin sounds amazing in the big-band context. Every drummer and fan of Elvin should really check this out! It’s a pretty amazing feat in and of itself, but truly stands alone regardless of the story behind it. This is a wonderful album!