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MarchForth Marching Band still travels with stiltwalkers and dancers.
Sometimes a recording session can take on an impromptu air. That happened last year when the MarchForth Marching Band was recording its recent album “Magnificent Beast” in its hometown of Portland, Ore.
The band had invited several members of New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Jazz Band to sit in on the recording of the tune “Rose City Strut.” But the three guest musicians had little advance notice of what they were going to play and they had to hotfoot it back to their nearby concert they were about to give.
“It was a magic moment for me just because I wrote the song in a sort of jazz idiom and I don’t consider myself a jazz musician at all,” said John Averill, a co-founder and the bassist and bandleader of MarchForth, in a phone interview.
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MarchForth Marching Band Diego’s Umbrella opens WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 24 WHERE: El Rey Theater, 620 W. Central HOW MUCH: $15 in advance, $20 day of show at www.ampconcerts.org or at Hold My Ticket, 210 Second SW, or call 886-1251 |
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Averill was thrilled that they would show up and improvise on a song they’d never heard.
“I told them, ‘Go for it, play whatever you want.’ It was fun to hear the interplay of the tenor sax with the clarinet. We don’t have a clarinet,” he said.
The third guest from the Preservation Hall band was a tuba player, who came in and played a few notes at the end of the song, Averill said.
“The stage manager came down looking for them. They did the track and then immediately went to play on stage,” he said.
MarchForth will be in concert Tuesday, Jan. 24, at El Rey Theater. But it’s a slimmer MarchForth. It has fewer members than the last time it came to Albuquerque. Averill said the band, which had numbered 20 musicians, has streamlined to about 14 players. Most of the shrinkage is in the drumming section.
Much of the reason for the cutback is that it was always iffy rounding up so many musicians to go on tour, he said.
“The orchestra had a lot of clutter, extra notes. We were trainwrecking,” Averill said. “We’re still playing 150 to 200 shows a year. With the (fewer) musicians you get a tighter sound and all that playing makes you a better band.”
The music also has migrated from world music and Afrobeat to more American music forms like funk, rock and jazz.
He insisted, however, that MarchForth has lost none of its verve nor irreverence. And it still travels with dancers and stiltwalkers.
Reprint story -- Email the reporter at dsteinberg@abqjournal.com. Call the reporter at 505-823-3925
