Eli Newberger
Eli & The Hot 6 celebrated Eli’s upcoming 75th Birthday with style at Sculler’s Jazz Club on December 17, 2015. The 8pm show sold out in no time and they had to add another at 10pm. The music at Scullers was up to their best,
The Boston Globe published an article December 29th by Bella English: “Tuba in hand, acclaimed physician Dr. Eli Newberger delights in his first passion.”
© Photos by Eric Antoniou www.ericantoniou.com/
The Hot Six feature some of Boston’s finest, legendary musicians: Eli Newberger on tuba, Bob Winter on piano, Herb Gardner on trombone, Bo Winiker on trumpet and flugelhorn, Ted Casher on clarinet, soprano and tenor saxes, Jimmy Mazzy on banjo and vocals, Carolyn Newberger on washboard, Jeff Guthery on drums, Rebecca Sullivan vocals.
Eli and The Hot Six with Rebecca Sullivan
Eli & The Hot Six’s approach honors the New Orleans tradition of ensemble improvising while featuring the solo brilliance of its distinctive, contemporary musical personalities.
Videos of Eli and The Hot Six with Rebecca Sullivan at Sculler’s Jazz Club are on Eli Newberger’s You Tube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/user/EliNewberger.
Eli wrote:
“The music is stunningly beautiful and swings like mad. Everyone is both at ease and acutely tuned in, projecting emotional pinpoints and delivering delightful surprises.
Rebecca’s treatment of Ira Gershwin’s verses is unbelievably touching. Bob is like an Impressionist painter, deploying the whole piano as his palette, mixing stunning new colors and inventing heavenly harmonic washes in his solos. Herb’s punchy singing of “You Cares” sounds like he’s channeling Henry “Red” Allen, especially in his ironic take on Ira’s immortal line, “Who cares if banks are failing in Yonkers, when it’s your kiss that conquers?”
Ted, Jimmy, and Bo are so focused the ensemble — and vice versa– that even their brilliant solos (and there are too many to count) weave new threads into the gorgeous fabric of improvising:
Ted, for example, quotes Count Basie’s “Lil’ Darling” and Bob tosses it all over 3 choruses later in his pianistic evocation of the whole Basie band, even as Jeff does his best Jo Jones. Bo performs 2 “stop choruses” that ignite lightening storms — with flashes of instrumental accents through the remaining portions of those songs.
Jimmy shouts 3 fantastic final choruses on “St. Louis Blues,” (ending with an exalting Mazzy scream of “I love that gal like a schoolboy loves his pie, like a Kentucky colonel loves his rock and rye!” that Frank Cunningham was obliged to compress — because Jimmy almost lifted the track off the mixing board). This makes Ted into a Texas tenor and transforms Herb into a tailgate tiger. (Programming note: I included this W.C. Handy song both because he so influenced Gershwin, but because the “Summertime” melody uncannily resembles Handy’s second, minor, strain. And in real time at Scullers, I asked Rebecca to sing “Summertime” next (and did she ever!), but I refrained from pointing this out, so as not to shatter the mood.”
Ted Casher, Bo Winiker, Herb Gardner
Rebecca Sullivan
Jazz singer Rebecca Sullivan added an additional instrumental voice to the ensemble, in addition to her own deeply-felt interpretations of iconic vocal masterpieces.
Jimmy Mazzy and Eli Newberger have been together for years
Bob Winter, master improviser
Carolyn Newberger
Washboard Artist Carolyn Newberger Strikes Up The Band on washboard.
Carolyn and Rebecca chortling after Bob Winter’s and Carolyn’s humorous piano-washboard “conversation” on “Strike Up the Band!” It was one of the high points of the first set at Scullers!
Bo Winiker
Ted Casher
Herb Gardner
Jeff Guthery
Eli joined Bob for 4-hand piano on “St. Louis Blues.”
Bob shares piano with Eli
Professional Photographer Eric Antoniou caught beautiful photos despite the low light. Frank Cunningham’s preliminary CD cuts are nearly all top notch, so a Hot Six Gershwin CD is going to happen, soon! Stay tuned.