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Vance Thompson
Vance Thompson is the founder/music director/arranger of the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra, a professional big band, nonprofit organization based in Tennessee that produces dozens of concerts annually, has performed internationally, released acclaimed recordings, and collaborated with guests such as Monty Alexander, Hank Jones, Eric Reed, Michael Dease, Donald Brown, Carmen Bradford, Gregory Tardy, John Clayton, Stefon Harris and many others. Recent milestones include Thompson’s Grammy-nominated performance on trumpet (What If, Jerry Douglas Band), arranging for the 2023 Grammy-winning (Best Large Ensemble) Count Basie Orchestra album, Basie Swings the Blues and celebrating 25 years as a professor of Jazz Trumpet at the University of Tennessee’s College of Music.
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Vance Thompson's Reinvention
by Todd Steed
Vance Thompson wears a lot of impressive hats: composer, arranger, professor at the University of Tennessee, and founder of the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra. His main instrument was trumpet until a medical setback forced him to reinvent himself as a vibraphonist. This transformation is documented on his new album, “Lost and Found," featuring a high caliber quintet that can do just about anything it wants, from cooking on Thompson's original compositions to brilliant takes on music from Chick Corea ...
Continue ReadingVance Thompson: Lost and Found
by Jack Bowers
For several years, Vance Thompson's career as a musician hung in the balance. Owing to a neurological disorder known as Focal Dystonia, the Grammy-nominated trumpeter and founder of the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra was literally unable to blow his own horn. But unlike other people who may have thrown in the towel or called it a day, Thompson instead looked for an alternative, set his mind and body to work and learned to play a second instrument, namely the vibraphone.
Continue ReadingVance Thompson's Five Plus Six: Such Sweet Thunder
by Angelo Leonardi
La ricca didattica orchestrale delle università statunitensi continua a dare i suoi frutti, facendo nascere organici che non hanno molto da invidiare alle formazioni più celebrate. Questo riguarda in particolare il perfezionismo del collettivo, la flessibilità delle sue dinamiche, la tensione ritmica e l'opulenza timbrica. Il tutto entro orchestrazioni variopinte, capaci di padroneggiare un'ampia gamma espressiva ma rigorosamente modern mainstream. I Five plus Six di Vance Thompson sono un chiaro esempio di tutto questo. Il suo leader ...
Continue ReadingVance Thompson's Five Plus Six: Such Sweet Thunder
by Edward Blanco
Knoxville-based Trumpeter, arranger and band leader Vance Thompson formed The Marble City Five quintet over a year ago and when thinking about recording their first album, decided to augment the band by adding a six-piece horn section comprised of some of the city's younger rising talent. The resulting new Knoxville, TN-based group is now known as Five Plus Six and their audacious debut is appropriately titled Such Sweet Thunder, for there are a lot powerful sounds emanating from this light ...
Continue ReadingVance Thompson's Five Plus Six: Such Sweet Thunder
by Jack Bowers
For the mathematically challenged, Vance Thompson's Five Plus Six equals eleven. In other words, it's Thompson's working quintet, the Marble City Five, amplified by half a dozen horns. On its debut recording, the Knoxville, TN-based ensemble performs music by Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Thelonious Monk and--brace yourself--country singer Dolly Parton. In fact, Parton's “Little Sparrow," the album's longest-playing track at 10:21, lends itself surprisingly well to the jazz idiom, thanks in part to Thompson's engaging chart, as does the Appalachian ...
Continue ReadingVance Thompson: Among Friends
by David A. Orthmann
While earning a Masters of Music degree and then teaching at DePaul University, trumpeter, composer, and arranger Lance Thompson played in rehearsal bands with some of Chicago’s finest young talent. Before moving back to his native Knoxville to teach at the University of Tennessee and reconnect with the local jazz scene, Thompson assembled some of his peers and recorded Among Friends, his first disc as a leader.
Although the music is generally within the wide parameters of hard bop, Thompson ...
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