The trademark low brass punch of the NY Classics knocks out audiences all over the Big Apple, me included. Not so much a jamming big band like Clifford’s, they’re more in the tightly-knit Ellington groove. The Classics’ leader (and bass trombonist), Jack Jeffers is as good as they get. He’s spent more than 30 years in the big band trenches with some of the best, including the Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Charles and Clark Terry big bands. A great composer, Jack’s arrangements are a blast! He melds Ellingtonian elegance and bayou funk, gospel and John Philip Sousa, Harlem and the samba. According to Stereophile, “The arrangements are fabulous…it’s unbelievably dynamic and physical. Lots of sock, layer upon layer of sound…They just don’t come any cooler than this disc.”