Biography
Ed Palermo has directed his own large ensemble for well over a quarter century. Before establishing that group he appeared live or in the studio alongside Aretha Franklin, Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, Celia Cruz, Lena Horne, Tony Bennett, Mel Tormé, Lou Rawls, Melba Moore, Debbie Gibson, the Spinners, and numerous additional artists. He has also composed and orchestrated material for The Tonight Show, Maurice Hines, and Eddy Fischer. Master arranger Gil Evans singled out Palermo’s work with these words: “I first heard Ed Palermo’s music in a small club in the SoHo section of Manhattan. He was using the instrumentation of a traditional ‘big band’ yet his arrangements and songs were anything but that. When I thought the music was going a certain direction, it would suddenly turn a corner. Ed has the ability to keep that important balance between cohesiveness and unpredictability. Ed Palermo’s music is alive and represents now.”
Palermo has produced settings of pieces by composers as varied as Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles on one hand and Shostakovich and Milhaud on the other. Even so, he remains most widely recognized for his adaptations of Frank Zappa’s catalog, which his big band has presented continuously for twenty years. In 1997 the ensemble issued the widely praised The Ed Palermo Big Band Plays the Music of Frank Zappa on the Astor Place imprint, with guest contributions from Mike Stern and Mike Keneally.
During July 2002 the Ed Palermo Big Band appeared at the Zappanale Festival in Bad Doberan, Germany; twelve months afterward a Swedish iteration of the group performed at the Umeå Internationella Kammarmusik Festival, again featuring Napoleon Murphy Brock and Keneally as guests. Their second Zappa-focused album, Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance, appeared in May 2006. Three years later Palermo and the band returned with the further Zappa-themed project Eddy Loves Frank. Oh No!! Not Jazz!! arrived in 2014. In 2017 Palermo released The Great Un-American Songbook, Volumes I & II, containing jazz treatments of material by British rock acts that include the Beatles, Cream, the Rolling Stones, and Radiohead.
Palermo has produced settings of pieces by composers as varied as Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles on one hand and Shostakovich and Milhaud on the other. Even so, he remains most widely recognized for his adaptations of Frank Zappa’s catalog, which his big band has presented continuously for twenty years. In 1997 the ensemble issued the widely praised The Ed Palermo Big Band Plays the Music of Frank Zappa on the Astor Place imprint, with guest contributions from Mike Stern and Mike Keneally.
During July 2002 the Ed Palermo Big Band appeared at the Zappanale Festival in Bad Doberan, Germany; twelve months afterward a Swedish iteration of the group performed at the Umeå Internationella Kammarmusik Festival, again featuring Napoleon Murphy Brock and Keneally as guests. Their second Zappa-focused album, Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance, appeared in May 2006. Three years later Palermo and the band returned with the further Zappa-themed project Eddy Loves Frank. Oh No!! Not Jazz!! arrived in 2014. In 2017 Palermo released The Great Un-American Songbook, Volumes I & II, containing jazz treatments of material by British rock acts that include the Beatles, Cream, the Rolling Stones, and Radiohead.
Albums
