Podcast 470: A Conversation with Frank Vaganée of the Brussels Jazz Orchestra

It's the best band I ever worked with."- Maria Schneider The Brussels Jazz Orchestra will present the U.S. premiere of "Graphicology—A Visual Jazz Score" at Jazz at Lincoln Center, March 20-22 at 7.30 and 9.30 pm at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola (located at Broadway at 60th Street, 5th Floor, New York City).  For the performances, the BJO will team up with illustrator and jazz lover Philip Paquet, with whom they created a multimedia project combining big band jazz and a graphic novel. Six composers were commissioned by the BJO to create individual soundtracks to accompany jazz-related stories, comic strip-style. Edited into original videos, Paquet's illustrated stories will be shown onscreen while the Orchestra performs the soundtracks. The BJO is celebrating its 22nd year as one of the premier Big Bands in Europe, if not the world. Guided by Artistic Director Frank Vaganée, the group has made appoint to create these sort of multi-media events, and even worked on the score to the Academy-Award winning film The Artist. The Orchestra has released more than sixteen CDs, the latest of which with Joe Lovano, Wild Beauty, was nominated for two Grammy Awards. Podcast 470 is my conversation with Frank Vaganée, and features musical selections from BJO projects with Lovano (“Streets of Naples”) and Kenny Werner (“Second Love Song” )from Institute of Higher Learning)  as well as "Peppy and George" from the soundtrack of The Artist.