Big-band music with modern composing, adventurous soloing and just a solid overall sense of idea and flow. Accessible stuff: Many tracks start with a LOUD heart-pounding intro and launch immediately into solos. It retains the swingy (even funky) quality of old big bands but adds modern touches like twelve-tone themes, and of course Sam himself turns in some good solos. You can dance to it, maybe with a little creativity.

Overall it's a tightly organized and played session, but with so many people (and so many things going on) that it's a glorious mess at times. Exciting, kick-ass stuff.

Tracks tend to start near-silent, with Sam counting off the beat. You might want to skip directly to the BLAST of the actual music.
Instrumental; FCC clean.

Rivers has a couple of all-star big-band albums out (see "Culmination" in our library) but this time he's recruited musicians from his home state of Florida. The results aren't as breakneck fast this time but they're still fantastic.

1- Nicely "heavy" feel, relatively slow.
2- Drunkenly brash, drops into a nice fast swing.
3- Screaming intro; fairly fast soloing space.
4- Fast
5- Swirly chaos, into a funky step and flute solo.
6- Stabbing fast theme
7- Calm, relatively. Mid/fast tuba chugging. Loud drum solo later
8- Fast
9- A bit of a cooldown, but still loud, messy and at least mid/fast