Derrick Gardner & the Big Dig! Band - Still I Rise (2020)

Derrick Gardner’s Big dig! Band is a classic jazz orchestra: spectacular sax, trombone, and trumpet sections studded with world-class musicians, and a rock-solid rhythm section to anchor all those flights of fancy. This band has weight, polish, sparkle, and drive. It swings without an ounce of apology, and at the same time feels current and fresh.

First dreamed up in 2014 with co-leader Steve Kirby, the Big dig! Band takes its name—and its retro black-and-white design aesthetic—from dig! magazine, a bi-monthly publication designed by John Funk which thrived under Steve’s care for over a dozen years.

For Still I Rise, Derrick has gathered musicians from all over North America, and together their depth of experience is almost dizzying. Derrick himself is an alumnus of the Count Basie Orchestra and an heir apparent to Frank Foster, one of the band’s most celebrated arrangers. Vincent Gardner—yes, Derrick’s brother—has played with the Jazz at Lincoln Center and Count Basie Orchestras, and is the artistic director of the Jazz Houston Orchestra. Mark Gross played in the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Bijon Watson in the Gerald Wilson and Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestras, Rob Dixon in the Maria Schneider Orchestra and the Illinois Jacquet Big Band. That’s just scratching the surface. These musicians, along with Zen Zadravec, Curtis Taylor, and others, have chalked up credits with a veritable who’s who in jazz, from the Marsalis brothers and Diana Krall to Gregory Porter, Nicholas Payton, James Carter, Benny Golson… and the list goes on.

Since his arrival in Winnipeg in 2011, Derrick has held the Babs Asper Chair in Jazz Trumpet at the Desautels Faculty of Music at the University of Manitoba, and has instilled a love for the art form in countless students. Several of the members of the Big dig! Band—Luke Sellick, Curtis Nowosad, Tristan Martinuson, Anthony Bryson, and Kasey Kurtz—have come up through that Jazz Studies program, and are establishing themselves in New York and elsewhere. Manitoba artists Greg Gatien, Ken Gold, Jeff Johnson, Andrew Littleford, Joel Green, and Bill Green, all members of the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra, round out the band.

Still I Rise showcases Derrick’s formidable trumpet chops, but also his finesse as a composer and arranger. From greasy blues to extravagant showstoppers to languid ballads, these tunes have sinew and sparkle, muscle and shimmer. His soli sections are fully charged, and his compositional ideas move brilliantly through the band, making room for inspired soloing. He lets his star players blaze, and makes room for the younger players to shoulder in.

Still I Rise is a sleek, powerful, gorgeous project, and under all the brilliance is a driving energy which is both musical and political. Buckle up—this ride is real!

—Charlene Diehl