Aug 26, 2025 1:53 PM
Blindfold Test: Buster Williams
Buster Williams, who at the age of 83 has been on the scene for 65 years, had never done a Blindfold Test. The first…
Sherrie Maricle (middle row, wearing pink T-shirt) poses for a portrait with the members of the DIVA Jazz Orchestra.
(Photo: Bob Weidner)Buddy Rich used to bill himself as the World’s Greatest Drummer. Sherrie Maricle would not disagree. Chatting in a Carnegie Hall anteroom before an April performance with the New York Pops, the drummer recalled seeing Rich for the first time in 1974 at the Forum in Binghamton, New York. She was 11.
“I remember my jaw dropping,” she said. “I was awestruck.”
That experience served as motivation in her percussion studies, from her undergraduate career at SUNY Binghamton through her days as a doctoral student at New York University. And its effects are evident today in every swinging stroke of her drum stick as she propels the DIVA Jazz Orchestra into its second quarter-century.
The orchestra was the brainchild of Rich’s longtime manager, the late Stanley Kay, who, aware of Maricle’s ability to channel Rich’s sensibility—and eager to help rectify the lack of opportunities for women in jazz—suggested to her that they form an all-female big band.
Under her musical direction, the band has over the years cooked up a muscular mix of swagger, soul and intense lyricism. The orchestra’s impressive longevity can be attributed partially to the aesthetic clarity with which she guides the band.
“I like tunes with melodies,” Maricle said. “For lack of a better term, ‘straightahead’ and swinging all the way.”
Those were the guidelines Maricle gave the band members when they wrote material for the DIVA Jazz Orchestra’s 25th Anniversary Project (ArtistShare). Unlike the band’s nine previous albums—which featured compositions and arrangements by genre stalwarts—the new album consists solely of tunes by the band’s members.
“This recording represents the next chapter of DIVA,” said trumpeter and band manager Jami Dauber, who joined in 1995.
Within Maricle’s parameters, the tunes are a varied lot. They range from unadorned swingers, like baritone saxophonist/bass clarinetist Leigh Pilzer’s opener, “East Coast Andy,” to Maricle’s closer, “The Rhythm Changes.”
In between, the tunes invoke the sounds of Latin America and the Middle East. And they explore personal themes, as on Maricle’s exquisite ballad “Forever In My Heart,” a piece about love and loss, whose major minor seventh chords, she said, “embody the message of the song.”
While the band rarely has departed from its prime directive to swing, it has experimented harmonically—combining with the New York Pops for Rolf Liebermann’s 12-tone “Concerto For Jazz Band And Symphony Orchestra.” The piece brought 95 musicians to the Carnegie Hall stage.
“It was an amazing experience,” Dauber said. “I’d love to do it again.”
The combined forces have tackled other extended works, among them Tommy Newsom’s arrangement of “Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead.” But DIVA’s 400 big band charts remain its bread-and-butter. At the band’s annual March gig at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in New York, the group emphasized those charts, highlighted by the material on the new album. The engagement featured guest appearances by two former DIVA members: clarinetist Anat Cohen and trumpeter Ingrid Jensen.
The band continues to schedule concerts at top venues. Last year, it played the Hollywood Bowl for the third time. In August, DIVA will make its debut at the Newport Jazz Festival. But other spots remain unconquered, prime among them the London landmark Ronnie Scott’s. As the site of one of Maricle’s favorite albums, 1980’s Buddy Rich Live At Ronnie Scott’s, the Soho club holds a special place among her aspirations.
“It’s on my bucket list,” she said. DB
“What I got from Percy was the dignity of playing the bass,” Buster Williams said of Percy Heath.
Aug 26, 2025 1:53 PM
Buster Williams, who at the age of 83 has been on the scene for 65 years, had never done a Blindfold Test. The first…
Don and Maureen Sickler serve as the keepers of engineer Rudy Van Gelder’s flame at Van Gelder Studio, perhaps the most famous recording studio in jazz history.
Sep 3, 2025 12:02 PM
On the last Sunday of 2024, in the control room of Van Gelder Studio, Don and Maureen Sickler, co-owners since Rudy Van…
The Free Slave, Cosmos Nucleus and Sunset To Dawn: three classic Muse albums being reissued this fall by Timer Traveler Recordings.
Aug 26, 2025 1:32 PM
Record producer and “Jazz Detective” Zev Feldman has launched his next endeavor, the archival label Time Traveler…
Butcher Brown, clockwise from top left: Marcus Tenney, DJ Harrison, Morgan Burrs, Corey Fonville and Andrew Randazzo. (Keyboardist Harrison couldn’t make the gig, so special guest Jacob Mann sat in with the band at the Reno Jazz Festival.)
Aug 19, 2025 12:41 PM
The band known as Butcher Brown has enjoyed the last half-decade basking in the glow from the twin engines of critical…
This year’s Jazz em Agosto set by the Darius Jones Trio captured the titular alto saxophonist at his most ferocious.
Aug 26, 2025 1:31 PM
The organizers of Lisbon, Portugal’s Jazz em Agosto Festival assume its audience is thoughtful and independent. Over…
