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| Artist: Fred Ho |
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| Label: Innova |
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| Price: $13.95 |
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| Year: 2011 |
| Format:
CD
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Quantity:
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The Old Fred Ho (also known until 1988 as Fred Houn) died on August 4, 2006 of advanced colo-rectal cancer. His progeny, the New Fred Ho, born August 5, 2006, has taken up the mantle of his predecessor, including forming the incredible Green Monster Big Band, a gathering of Who’s Who of virtuosi-improvisers across the U.S.; continuing to lead the Afro Asian Music Ensemble; and imagining and producing fantastic new stage productions of manga-opera/martial-arts/music theater.
FRED HO and the GREEN MONSTER BIG BAND's second recording, YEAR OF THE TIGER, debuts on Innova. Year of the Tiger spans the "popular avant garde" palette of composer Ho's fondness for television themes (here The Johnny Quest Theme), a medley tribute to the late Michael Jackson (Very, Very Baaad!, with a version of "Thriller" that has a Wachowski Brothers-Noam Chomsky tongue-in-cheek spoof upon the late Vincent Price's iconic oratorio), two fresh interpretations of Jimi Hendrix ("Fire" and "Purple Haze"), one of Ho's boyhood idols, a new opus by Ho, Take the Zen Train, commissioned by Harvard University (Ho was awarded the 2009-2010 Harvard Arts Medal), along with a combined children and adult choir with Chinese instrumentation version of a martial arts-movie theme classic (Hero Among Heroes) and an excerpt from a new opera collaboration between Ho and librettist Ruth Margraff, Cleopatra and Anthony (an Afro-centric manga-opera).
Composer-baritone saxophone virtuoso FRED HO has assembled one of American music's most extraordinary large ensembles, THE GREEN MONSTER BIG BAND, featuring a stellar assembly of musician-improvisers and a repertoire that encompasses vanguard extended works by Ho to his imaginative arrangements of Rock and Pop classics by Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson, Black Sabbath, Iron Butterfly, adding a powerful freshness and revolutionary excitement to the big band tradition from Ellington to Sun Ra. And if this combination wasn't incredulous enough, Ho has added to the big band repertoire his personal childhood Television theme-song favorites (eg., The Spider-Man Theme or The Johnny Quest Theme)!
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ARTISTS
Bobby Zankel, Jim Hobbs, Hafez Modirzadeh, Salim Washington, Fred Ho (reeds); Stanton Davis, Nabate Isles, Amir ElSaffar (trumpets); Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet); Bob Pilkingtoni, Marty Wehner, Richard Harper, Earl McIntyre, Jr., David Harris (trombones); Art Hirahara (piano); Wes Brown (bass); Mary Halvorson (guitar); Royal Hartigan (drums) |
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