How did the European classical orchestras or dance music orchestras welcome and adapt jazz when it arrived from the United States in the interwar years?

 

What kind of part did the American musicians such as Benny Carter, Duke Ellington, Sam Wooding, Willie Lewis or Fud Livingston play in passing jazz onto these musicians from all over Europe?

 

The Umlaut Big Band intends to answer these questions by highlighting arrangers and musicians of the first European jazz orchestras, the ones of Léo Vauchant (France), Sid Phillipps (England), Luis Bienvenido (Spain), Jan Sima (Czechoslovakia) and many others, from 1925 to 1940.

 

The band also documents the role of American musicians in the transmission of this new music for parties and dances, particularly during their tours in Europe.

 

Groping around, heterogeneous, pioneer and therefore very rich, this subject with too few archives is the subject of a unique and surprising research, unveiling forgotten artists.

 

This work is the subject of 2 records, EURO SWING (Umlaut Records 2015) and EURO SWING, VOL.2 (Umlaut Records 2016), both accompanied by a richly documented booklet.