ALEXANDER EHRENREICH  

Alexander Ehrenreich Big Band

 

Alexander Ehrenreich, born 1973, founded after numerous years of experience the big band, which bears his own name. Having grown up with big band Jazz (thanks to his dad), he profited in younger years from the opportunities to observe and play with professional musicians and from working with international guest soloists such as Harry "Sweets" Edison, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis,Don Menza and many others. The Alexander Ehrenreich Big Band is in spirit the successor to Teddy Ehrenreich (passed away in 2014), who throughout his life devoted himself to the great musical literature of Woody Herman and always endeavored to promote young and upcoming musicians.

Still today, these glorious arrangements are passionately played, from the swing era to the 70´s, a timeperiod in which Woody Herman with his "herds" took Fusion and Jazz-Rock in Big Band formation to higher heights. The present concept of the Alexander Ehrenreich Big Band consists in nurturing the aforementioned tradition, but also in the form of projects by inviting guest soloists and vocalists, who through their input will give many of the well-loved arrangements a so called "fresh coat pf paint".

 

So it has already come to collaborations with WDR lead-trumpetplayer Andy Haderer, Vienna Art Orchestra saxophoneplayer Herwig Gradischnig, the german vocalist Jörg Seidel, or latest with the latin tromboneplayer Joe Gallardo and the Hammond B3 world star Barbara Dennerlein.

Apart from the sensational Woody Herman arrangements by Bill Stapleton, John Fedchock, Alan Broadbent, different top arrangers in residence of the upcoming jazzscene have taken over the actual function as arrangers for the present Alexander Ehrenreich Big Band.

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Alexander Ehrenreich5

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As the son of a big band legend, it was expectable, Alexander was introduced to Jazz in his very early years,

especially to Big Band Jazz. At the age of 14, he began autodidact to learn saxophone and clarinet before he took up his formal studies at the age of 20 at the University for Music & Performing Arts in Vienna, where he studied 

Instrumental and Vocal Pedagogy. During his education, he produced diverse recordings under his own name with the best musicians of the Austrian Jazz, Pop, Soul and Funk scene. His love for the classical jazzquintet lineup he also developed in his younger years after being greatly influenced by some tenorsax giants of history like Hank Mobley, Johnny Griffin, Dexter Gordon and Sonny Rollins.

The Alexander Ehrenreich5 was already founded in 2008 and got its start in former Joe Zawinul´s Birdland.

 

Since then they have enjoyed various performances in the most renowned jazzclubs troughout Austria.

In the present lineup with Axel Mayer tp, Robert Schönherr p, Philipp Zarfl b, Klemens Marktl dm,

Alexander has found his "partners in crime", with which he can realize his musical ideas, they are strongly oriented in the Hard Bop era like Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Lee Morgan, etc. 

They play rare classics from this jazzepoch as well as original compositions of the individual band members.

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