INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra with Everett Greene
Concerts on the Canal; Indiana History Center; July 17
Count Basie’s band is considered the definitive dance band and that’s how the BWJO delivered the Count’s 50 years of big-band sound and easy-going, swinging style. On the packed terrace there wasn’t much space for dancing, so there was a lot of body movement in the seats and humming along with familiar tunes. Basie set the standard for jazz as a physical, visceral, emotional and intellectual experience, and that’s how the supremely attuned BWJO players play with and off each other, voicing sections to build from the ground up — feet, guts, heart and mind. Licks are never hurried — a soloist takes time to show what he’s feeling, thinking, and when it’s time for a change-up, there’s a compliment at the start and an extension of the idea embroidered with an added point of view. And then the honey-voiced Everett Greene takes the microphone and the best reaches beyond better. There isn’t sufficient vocabulary to describe his rendition, with BWJO backing, of “What a Wonderful World.”