'Something's Coming' is the debut studio album from top UK-based contemporary jazz orchestra, The Callum Au Big Band. Recorded at Angel Studios, London, in late 2012 by Grammy-Award-winning engineer Steve Price, this album fully features the 17 members of the big band, alongside a staggering complement of special guests: vocalists Emma Smith and Iain Mackenzie, flautist Gareth Lockrane, and saxophonists Peter Long and Nigel Hitchcock. The centrepiece of the album is Callum’s new West Side Story Suite for Big Band – a continuous work in six movements based on some of the most famous melodies from Leonard Bernstein’s musical. The Suite was first performed in West Side Story’s 50th Anniversary year at the Cadogan Hall’s Out to Lunch festival. It reinvents the well-known and popular music from the show, with each movement giving a new big band twist to Bernstein’s melodies, from the shifting time signatures of “Something’s Coming” to the electric, Jaco-influenced “America”, and the pensive, gospel treatment of “Somewhere”. In addition to the suite, the album features a set of new commissions specially written for the band: Callum Au’s ‘Gentleman Jack’; Freddie Gavita’s ‘Beloved’ and UK flute virtuoso and master composer/arranger Gareth Lockrane’s ‘Roots’. The album’s first track, Callum’s arrangement of the Harry Warren standard “September in the Rain”, is a very conscious tribute to the great American big bands of Count Basie, Nelson Riddle, and Thad Jones, some of the band’s greatest influences. Please see reviews of the album below: AllAboutJazz - Review - Something’s Coming (Callum Au Big Band) Trombonist and arranger Callum Au has amassed a remarkable wealth of experience, playing or arranging for, among others, the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, the Oxford University Big Band (he graduated from the university in 2011), Seth MacFarlane and Buddy Greco. He's a busy man—a list of his projects suggests that he's discovered the secret of the 30-hour day—and he's now found time to release his own debut, Something's Coming. Au has brought together a group of talented young players, assisted by guest appearances from singers Emma Smith (also an ex-NYJO member) and Iain Mackenzie (BBC Big Band and Ronnie Scott's Jazz Orchestra), and from the well-established saxophonist Nigel Hitchcock and flautist Gareth Lockrane. From the opening bars of Harry Warren's "September In The Rain" the band exudes warmth and confidence. It also swings, guitarist Jon Russell, bassist Laurence Ungless and drummer Ed Richardson establishing the feel with ease. Lockrane's "Roots" has a bluesy atmosphere—Hitchcock's high-energy alto and Russell's slick guitar solos fit right in. Trumpeter Freddie Gavita's "Beloved" is contrastingly gentler and more reflective and Au's own "Gentleman Jack"—dedicated to bass trombonist Jack Thirlwall—ends the album with a return to an upbeat swing. The centerpiece is a suite from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story. Some of the most recognizable and best-loved songs from one of the classic musicals, rearranged, re-harmonized and given something of a culture shift. Well, if Au's brave—or foolhardy—enough to stick his head over the musical parapet fair play to him. If the gamble fails, it fails. It doesn't fail. A major contributing factor is Au's wise decision to avoid trying to make this British band sound like Sharks or Jets. "Cool" and "Something's Coming" capture the pace and energy of New York without the aggression. "America" lacks the fiery irony of the movie version and the bombast of the instrumental by '60s rockers The Nice, replacing them with a calmer, more positive, tone—everything really is OK in America. Smith's beautiful vocal is the highlight of "Somewhere," but the song also benefits from exceptional solos by pianist Chris Eldred and Lockrane, on bass flute. Mackenzie's vocal on "Maria" is Mel Tormé smooth. Best of all is "Tonight." The song's emotional intensity is held just a little more in check than usual, the two lovers are just a bit more controlled, almost as if West Side Story was based on the classic movie Brief Encounter (1945) rather than on Romeo and Juliet. This touch of English reticence gives the song an added poignancy, the doomed romance gaining even more pathos. Something's Coming is, at its heart, a swinging big band album. It follows with irrefutable logic, therefore, that Au's ensemble is a swinging big band. That, in itself, would be a cause for celebration in these austere times, but Au makes it more than that, giving it a sense of dynamics, a feeling for the emotions and subtleties of the music as well as its swing. Something's Coming is something (very) good indeed. BRUCE LINDSAY - ALLABOUTJAZZ JazzUK: Hot Tracks - Something’s Coming (Callum Au Big Band) Callum Au is a name you may have heard before: be it through his training with NYJO, his work with the Ronnie Scott’s Big Band or the recent performance of his arrangement of ‘September in the Rain’ by the BBC Big Band. It is this well-known track that not only opens Au’s debut record, entitled Something’s Coming, but also confirms the high regard in which all who have heard his work holds him. With an upbringing surrounded in big band tradition it is only fitting that the album showcases his own. The ‘Callum Au Big Band’ features a host of fine young jazz talent and, for the album, welcomes the familiar names of Nigel Hitchcock (alto sax), Pete Long (tubax), Gareth Lockrane (flute), Emma Smith and Iain Mackenzie (vocals). The centerpiece of Au’s debut album is a suite based on Leonard Bernstein’s‘ West Side Story’. It is a dangerous game to take music that people know and love and change the way it is perceived, but with Au’s high level of musician- ship this selection of pieces offers the perfect balance of traditional and contemporary big band music. Paying homage to Bernstein’s stylistic approaches, a selection of ever-developing themes, textures and feels combine with a sweeping sense of development that enhances his more traditional approach. That is not to say that this album is not bursting with impressive section playing and finely crafted solos, in particular those of trumpeter Henry Armburg Jennings and saxophonist Simon Marsh. The band performs with great musicality as the set unfolds into a suite that holds great beauty, with the special guests making their own personal mark within the work. As well as the ‘West Side Story Suite’, Au’s Something’s Coming also features four other tracks including Freddie Gavita’s Beloved and Gareth Lockrane’s Roots, with added bonus track available online. With a highly talented and well rehearsed band, a selection of finely crafted arrangements and some inspiring trombone improvisation from the band leader himself this album has put Callum Au firmly on the map as the young go-to-guy for British big band music. A promising debut and I for one can’t wait to hear more! PHIL MEADOWS - JAZZ UK