Tacoma saxophonist Cliff Colon will celebrate the release of his debut album CONTRABAND with a CD release party on Sunday, November 9th at Jazzbones, start time is at 6:00pm.
The debut album contains jazz arrangements of the music from the 1980's side-scrolling, run & gun, 8-bit video game called Contra. The songs chronical each level (or stage) of the game, in sequential order. Since the beginning of jazz, musicians have reworked songs familiar to non-jazz listeners and made them their own. Music from pop tunes, movie soundtracks and Broadway shows have been arranged and performed in a jazz format. The album "ContraBand" was created in honor of this tradition. In his arrangements, Cliff has kept the melody, harmony lines, and feel of the compositions true to their original form, while still opening up the songs with jazz chord changes to allow for improvised solos. Tenor saxophonist Cliff Colon will perform all of the tracks from the new CD at both CD release shows with Seattle musicians J. Charles on alto saxophone, Frank Seeberger on guitar, Eric Verlinde on rhodes, Chuck Kistler on bass and D'Vonne Lewis on drums. The new CD will be available for the first time at the shows and then at indie record stores around town and online through the websites; ContraBandJazz.com, CliffColon.com and CDBaby.com.
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