Kendrick Oliver

Kendrick Oliver & The New Life Jazz Orchestra: Welcome to New Life

by Jack Bowers
July 25, 2003

If Count Basie were alive today, he’d no doubt be leading the enthusiastic applause for Kendrick Oliver’s New Life Jazz Orchestra which punctuates the Basie-centered ensemble’s debut album, recorded in concert last September at Scullers Jazz Club in Boston. “One thing we’ve never been accused of,” says Oliver, “is being boring”--and that they are not, zealously ripping into classics associated with Basie, Ellington, Cab Calloway and Billie Holiday, several luminous original compositions and a pair of time-honored spirituals (“Wade in ...