Josh Roseman's 'Downtown NYC' jazz take on 'Land of Make Believe'

[Jim Dixon]

Trombonist Josh Roseman worked with Dave Douglas and other downtown NYC jazz musicians in the 1990s and 2000s, and his 2002 solo record has a version of "Land of Make Believe" that is in the same ballpark as some of the arrangements on John Zorn's "Great Jewish Music" Bacharach anthology. This stuff isn't for everyone, but Roseman keeps things pretty "inside" for the most part, and his arrangement on this particular track strays closer to vanilla smooth jazz than most of the record (though David Fiuczynski's overdriven guitar sound adds a little edge). Anyway, if you like oddball instrumental covers of Bacharach tunes and don't know this one, here it is:

[Blair N. Cummings]

I didn`t think this was at all bad; in fact I found it to be quite respectful of the composition. I couldn`t say that about much of the Zorn project.

[Jim Dixon]

I didn`t think this was at all bad; in fact I found it to be quite respectful of the composition. I couldn`t say that about much of the Zorn project.

There's about 4 on the Zorn album that are astonishingly good, and about 5 that are astonishingly bad. I won't try to mount a defense of the balance (though I could!), but I bet Burt the orchestrator, had he listened to this arrangement of "Promises, Promises", would have been impressed by how much mileage Erik Friedlander got out of a pretty unusual ensemble of cello, bass, clarinet, and bass clarinet.



For many years I didn't realize that the Dave Douglas recording of "Wives and Lovers" with trumpet, piano, flute and bass sax was simply a reduction of Bacharach's own very creative 1971 fantasia on the tune. It's still impressive to me simply for the performance. I wish Burt had done more arrangements like "Wives and Lovers" and "Alfie" on his solo records, really taking the tunes to some new places.

[Blair N. Cummings]

This track benefits from being arranged by Zorn, the obvious AACM aficionado than Zorn, the Klezmer student. Like another career-long wild card, Anthony Braxton, Zorn could be phenomenally imaginative or phenomenally self-indulgent. But, as Miles said, "If you don`t make mistakes, you ain`t tryin`."

[Jim Dixon]

This track benefits from being arranged by Zorn, the obvious AACM aficionado than Zorn, the Klezmer student. Like another career-long wild card, Anthony Braxton, Zorn could be phenomenally imaginative or phenomenally self-indulgent. But, as Miles said, "If you don`t make mistakes, you ain`t tryin`."

If the liner notes are to be believed, Zorn didn't arrange any of the tunes on the Bacharach tribute, and doesn't play on any of them. He seems to be simply curating, much like Hal Willner did on those tribute records for Nino Rota, Monk, Weill, Disney, and Mingus.

[Blair N. Cummings]

I`ll take the liner notes` word over my faulty memory. I haven`t owned this album for many years.