Although guitarist Dave Stryker and arranger and conductor Brent Wallarab are both faculty members of Indiana University in their Jazz Studies Program, they had not worked together until they collaborated on the Emmy-winning PBS special ‘Wes Montgomery at 100: A 100th Birthday Tribute Concert’. They were both particularly pleased with their take on Mancini’s “Dreamland”, so much so that they discussed undertaking an album together, and here we have the result. Stryker pulled together a studio orchestra of 30 people, with a jazz quartet at its heart, while Wallarab provided all the arrangements and conducted. The result is a very thematic take on 11 pieces which will be mostly very familiar indeed.

It is a very pleasant collection, although it has been very smoothed over indeed, an example being “Theme from Shaft” which has lost the passion, angst and anger which was in the original, and in many ways has the same amount of impact as “Edelweiss” (‘Sound of Music’ which closes the album), yet in reality they are normally very different pieces from very different movies indeed. Only one movie is referenced twice, ‘Anatomy of a Murder’, but given it is two numbers by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn perhaps that is not really surprising. It is a very pleasant album, although never truly groundbreaking, and while it never really makes it past something for a nice background while doing something else, it is nice all the same.

Rating: 7/10

Links:
https://www.davestryker.com/