New Release: A Celebration of Maurice Hines, Tappin’ Thru Life from the DIVA Jazz Orchestra

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New Release:  A Celebration of Maurice Hines, Tappin’ Thru Life from the DIVA Jazz Orchestra
Label: DIVA Jazz
Release Date: May 15, 2025
Website: https://divajazz.com
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@divajazzorch
YouTube: https://youtu.be/IYvmtKvMVHI
Capturing the glitz, pomp, and merrymaking of Prohibition Era jazz and the Golden Age of jazz, the DIVA Jazz Orchestra, accompanied by a cadre of special guests, sizzle, shuffle, sway, swoon, and strut their way across their new release A Celebration of Maurice Hines, Tappin' Thru Life.  The recording is a tribute to the life and times of Maurice Hines, the award-winning singer, dancer, actor, choreographer, writer, director, and the older brother of iconic actor and dancer Gregory Hines.  Born in 1943, Maurice Hines passed away in 2023, leaving a legacy that holds the harbingers of vintage swing in reverence.  The recording revisits tunes featured in Maurice Hines's award winning show Tappin' Thru Life, a soundtrack that signifies his musical influences and his experiences in the world of show business.  Sherrie Maricle, the Music Director of this tribute and of Hines's show Tappin' Thru Life is also the drummer and leader of the DIVA Jazz Orchestra.  She has put together a reflective and delightful recording that features the smooth vocalese of Clint Holmes and Ann Hampton Callaway on "L.O.V.E." (composed by Bert Kaempfert and Milt Gabler, arranged Tommy Newsom), and the animated stylizing of vocalists John Manzari and Leo Manzari on the track "It Don’t Mean a Thing if It Ain’t Got That Swing" (composed by Duke Ellington and Irving Mills, arranged by Scott Whitfield).  Audiences will be enamored of these tracks, as Hines had been of them in his lifetime.

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