About This:

Formed in 1975 as an employee club of Digital Equipment Corporation in Maynard, Massachusetts, the Compaq Big Band has evolved into one of the longest continuously operating big bands in New England. Today, membership in the band consists of a number of DEC, Compaq, and Hewlett-Packard ‘alumni’, joined by other talented Boston area jazz musicians. Though they all have ‘9-to-5 jobs’, these guys gig out over thirty times a year, and have amassed a library of over 800 charts. Not a pocket big band of reduced instrumentation, and not just a sextet that gets together every so often and increases their numbers to form a ‘temporary big band’ when the money is right, this group is a full 20-piece ensemble of the same members rehearsing together every single week, performing only as a big band, for diverse clients and venues throughout New England.

“Bandwidth”, the Compaq Big Band’s debut CD, contains a mix of vocal and instrumental charts that showcase the power of fifteen horns, a cookin’ rhythm section, great instrumental soloists, and terrific vocalists. Included on the album are the standards you’d expect from an authentic big band – those that pay tribute to the Count Basie Orchestra, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin, and more. But standards are just the solid foundation for the CD. They’ve complemented these classics with high-energy charts from Buddy Rich, Stan Kenton, the Doc Severinsen Tonight Show Orchestra, and one of the top progressive big band arrangers of today, Tom Kubis.

For more information on the big band that’s kept New England swingin’ for over thirty years please visit www.compaqbigband.com.