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Joe Syrian
Born:
Joe Syrian is a veteran jazz drummer, bandleader, arranger, and producer best known as the founder and leader of the Motor City Jazz Octet, a Detroit-rooted ensemble devoted to hard bop, soul-jazz, and large-ensemble jazz arranging. Drawing from both classic jazz repertoire and American popular song, Syrian has developed the Octet into a flexible “little big band” featuring musicians from Detroit, New York, and beyond.
The Motor City Jazz Octet’s recent recordings include 2024’s Secret Message and 2026’s A Blue Time. The group’s repertoire blends jazz standards with inventive treatments of material by artists including the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Leon Russell, and Fleetwood Mac. Syrian has described the band’s approach as taking familiar songs and reshaping them through a modern jazz vocabulary while preserving strong melodies and groove.
About Metropolitan Jazz Octet
Instrument: Band / ensemble / orchestra
Results for pages tagged "Octet"...
Metropolitan Jazz Octet
Active since:
The Metropolitan Jazz Octet (MJO) is the reawakening of a group that started in the 1950’s by Chicago saxophonist and arranger Tom Hilliard.
From 1950 through mid-'80s Hilliard wrote many of the octets compositions. He worked with Chicago’s top arrangers and studio musicians expanding the library to 150-plus charts. In 1959 MJO recorded an album on the Argo label called “The Legend of Bix,” a tribute to 1920's great cornetist and composer Bix Beiderbecke.
As a professor at De Paul University School of Music, Hilliard taught three current members of MJO to whom he bequeathed his complete library, passing the torch to the next generation.
Florian Ross Octet: Tunes & Explorations
I love jazz octets. More than any other ensemble configuration, an octet shows off an arranger's stuff. Unlike a big band, an octet is fully exposed, with individual instruments coming and going rather than full sections broken into chords. In many ways, octets are little big bands—the skeletal version. As a listener, you get to hear ...
