Jim Cifelli

Best-known for founding the brand new York non-et, Manhattan resident Jim Cifelli is usually a post-bop/hard bop trumpeter and flügelhornist that has substantial skills as an arranger, composer, bandleader, and producer. Cifelli’s NY Nonet is exactly what veteran hard bop alto saxophonist Phil Woods would explain like a “small big music group”; quite simply, it really is a medium-sized device — not really a full-fledged orchestra or a genuine big music group, but bigger than the quartets and quintets that typically dominate straight-ahead bop and post-bop. As an arranger, Cifelli offers cited Oliver Nelson, Gil Evans, and Thad Jones as main affects, and his function also recalls Artwork Blakey’s hard-swinging Jazz Messengers (which often experienced five or six users but had a means of sounding just like a bigger music group). Cifelli didn’t in fact grow up in virtually any of NY City’s five boroughs; he was created ON, MAY 11, 1961 in Yorktown Heights, NY, and was raised for the reason that suburban region, which is approximately 35 kilometers north of ny. After marrying his wife Barbara Cifelli (who right now plays numerous reeds with the brand new York non-et), he transferred to Manhattan in 1989. In the first to middle-‘90s, Cifelli co-led the Uptown Jazz Orchestra, a fresh York big music group. But from then on gig finished, he chose that he wished to compose and request a medium-sized device and searched for the progress of Manny Albam, his structure teacher at that time. Albam was extremely stimulating and spoke at length about how very much he enjoyed composing for medium-sized groupings. Therefore in 1996, Cifelli produced the brand new York non-et, whose members have got included trombonist Pete McGuinness, trumpeter/flügelhornist Andy Gravish, tenor saxman Joel Frahm, alto and soprano saxman Cliff Lyons, guitarist Pete McCann, and drummer Tim Horner, amongst others. Cifelli’s wife Barbara provides played a number of different blowing wind instruments along with his nine-piece music group, including baritone sax, bass clarinet, and flute. Although Cifelli will take some trumpet and flügelhorn solos, no-one can accuse him of hogging the limelight being a soloist; if anything, Cifelli provides other bandmembers even more single space than he provides himself. Probably, Cifelli strategies the trumpet and flügelhorn just how Duke Ellington contacted his piano — like Ellington, he’s a talented soloist but appears to find himself in even more of the arranger/composer/bandleader function when compared to a soloist/improviser function. In early 1998, Cifelli’s released Bullet Trane (the first record with his NY Nonet) by himself label, Brief Notice Music. The next Cifelli/New York non-et album, WHICH MEANS YOU Say, was documented in 1998 and eventually released by A-Records (a subsidiary from the Netherlands-based Problem label). Tunnel Eyesight, Cifelli’s third NY Nonet record, was documented for Brief Notice and released in Feb 2003, Groove Eyesight premiered in 2005.