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New Leo Parker Transcription! and Leo related news..

JazzBariSax Curator, Andrew Hadro November 18, 2022 General, News, Transcriptions No Comments

Thanks to Aidan Sears we have our first new transcription addition in a while! Aidan sent in a chorus of blues from Leo Parker on the riff blues, “Leo Leaps In”, a short but incredibly joyous solo from a great album, “Back to Back Baritones”. Head over to the transcription repository to get a copy.

I’m sure you all have heard about the passing of the great Ronnie Cuber. Ronnie once told me in a lesson that he couldn’t listen to Leo Parker anymore because he would copy it so much! Incidentally the great baritonists, Jason Marshall and Frank Basile will be playing two nights this weekend to celebrate Ronnie Cuber at Cafe Bohemia in NYC – Friday and Saturday I believe. Both Jason and Frank are huge fans of Leo Parker and Frank has done quite a bit of work documenting all Leo Parker recordings.

In other Leo news, Leo P (not to be confused with the aforementioned Leo Parker) has won the 87th annual DownBeat Magazine Readers’ poll. I’m sure this will grind some people’s gears as Leo P doesn’t play strictly jazz and attracts a young following as much from his outfits, hair , and dancing as he does for his playing. I personally find his music a bit monotonous, but I am thrilled that a lot of young people find interest in acoustic music and instruments through him. Leo P is a fine baritonist and actually should get credit for incorporating some extended techniques into his playing in a very approachable way. Also we can hope that anyone that gets interested in the baritone through him will also branch out to other realms of the baritone and further inspiration found therein. So congratulations to Leo P, anyone hearing him for the first time should also definitely check out his main inspiration, the late great, Ronnie Cuber.

Leo P performance on the BBC

JazzBariSax Curator, Andrew Hadro September 12, 2017 General, Videos 1 Comment

Leo Pellegrino

(better known as Leo P, and not to be confused with Leo Parker), was recently featured in a tv performance with the BBC. Check out the video below. The dancing might arguably be more impressive than the playing, but its fairly fun to watch and exciting to see people actually appreciate the baritone sax on a fairly wide scale.

The saxophone intro and dancing are especially impressive. The performance eventually leads into an arrangement of the classic baritone saxophone feature by Charles Mingus, ‘Moanin’. The arrangement is very similar to the Mingus Band’s albeit with the addition of the well known Metropole Orchestra and a nice trumpet solo from Christian Scott. Leo seems to be channeling quite a bit of Ronnie Cuber in the rendition, although even in his younger days I don’t believe Ronnie was that fleet of foot.