Album Review: Storybook: The Music of Mark Miller from Birdland Big Band

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Storybook:  The Music of Mark Miller from Birdland Big Band
Label Name: Birdland Records
Release Date: August 29, 2025
Website: www.marktrombone.com

New York-based trombonist, composer and arranger Mark Miller leads Birdland Big Band into a cornucopia of swing, blues, hardcore bop, and modern orchestral jazz with their recording Storybook.  The Birdland Big Band is the house band at the iconic Birdland Jazz Club in New York City.  Their performance is on a professional scale.  Running parallel voices and entering multiple participants interceding the dialogue intermittently with ease and sophistication, never losing the main thread of the discourse.  Culminating into organized mayhem like traffic at the intersection of a heavily congested New York City intersection. This is the image Birdland Big Band incites in their performance of originals and their adventurous interpretations of jazz standards.

A fleet of horns, along with piano keys, vibrate brightly across the title track, twisting and bursting in lively intervals while maintaining a poised and elegant stance.  The interceding voices continue through "Water Lily," statuesque and suspended, floating into "Tenderly," a fluttery ballad sung by Nicole Zuraitis, whose bluesy voicing wraps the listener in a warm cloak.  The gentle swells of “Sail Away,” composed by Tom Harrell, convey a solace that fills every square inch of the track in harmonious raptures, switching to the bustling eruptions of the horns piping across "WTF."  

The band's interpretation of Joaquin Rodrigo's masterpiece "Concierto de Aranjuez" is stirring, opening with a marching cadence that imbues a Spanish tint in its bolero-inspired stride, climaxing with the ceremonial sounding toots of Glenn Drewes's flugelhorn, bolstered by the soaring flares of the flutes.  Capping the recording with the big band bash "Nonsense" sung by Zuraitis, her theatrical flair and animated vocals initiate a kinetic initiate and respond trade with the band that is spontaneous and ecstatic.  Stylish, sophisticated, and fun, the Birdland Big Band's contribution to the big band format showcases the musical style as an active participant in asserting collectives and is a motivating factor in the modern jazz landscape.

Musicians:
Musical Director: David DeJesus
Vocalist: Nicole Zuraitis
Alto saxes: Nathan Childers, David DeJesus
Tenor saxes: Troy Roberts, Sam Dillon
Bari Sax: Jason Marshall
Flutes: David DeJesus, Sam Dillon, Nathan Childers
Trumpets: Raul Agraz, John Walsh, Brandon Lee, Glenn Drewes, Max Darché
Trombones: Mark Miller, James Burton III, Ron Wilkins, Sara Jacovino, James Borowski (bass)
Piano: Kenny Ascher, Adam Birnbaum
Bass: Noriko Ueda
Drums: Chris Smith

Social Media Links:
https://www.facebook.com/BirdlandBigBandNYC
www.youtube.com/channel/UCSzOqGA5dbuHpayHm69WW9g

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