BIG BAND JAZZ MACHINE EYES GRAMMY NOD
ALBUM FROM GROUP LED BY IRA B. LISS FEATURES BASSIST NATHAN EAST, RECORDING WITH EAGLES’ VINCE GILL
Counting down a song is a way of life for many musicians, but Ira B. Liss and the 16 members of his Big Band Jazz Machine have two especially notable countdowns coming up in the next four days.
On Saturday, the group will headline the 40th anniversary celebration of Kehilat Ariel Messianic Synagogue. It will be the brassy ensemble’s first public gig since late 2019, shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down performances around the world. By coincidence, the band — which Liss has led through a number of iterations over the decades — earlier this year celebrated its own 40th anniversary.
On Tuesday, an even more notable event could occur when the nominations for the 64th annual Grammy Awards are announced. Liss and his bandmates are waiting with bated breath to find out if their sixth and most recent album made the cut.
Released in January after being completed remotely during the pandemic lockdown, “Mazel Tov Kocktail!” is the first Big Band Jazz Machine album to be submitted for Grammy consideration. The audacious album has earned the most favorable reviews of the group’s career, including in Jazziz magazine, and has earned airplay in Europe, Japan and Brazil.
“It would be a real, real honor and thrill to get a Grammy nomination,” Liss said. “It’s something you dream about your whole life and I know it would be very (meaningful for) the band and me.”
Liss is not a member of the Recording Academy, under whose auspices the Grammys are held. But the Big Band Jazz Machine’s Los Angeles-based publicist, Holly Cooper, is a member, and she submitted “Mazel Tov Kocktail!” in five Grammy categories, including Best Large Jazz Ensemble and Best Original Instrumental Composition (for the song “Bass: The Final Frontier”).
A showcase for San Diego-bred electric bass guitar great Nathan East, “Bass: The Final Frontier” was also submitted for Grammy nomination consideration in the Best Improvised Jazz Solo category.
Liss and East had previously encountered one another in the late 1960s and early 1970s when each played in rival high school jazz ensembles here, Liss at Patrick Henry and East at Crawford.
Liss approached East about recording with the Big Band Jazz Machine in 2015 at Sherwood Auditorium. The bassist was at the now-defunct La Jolla venue for a Union-Tribune-sponsored event to perform solo, screen “For the Record” (a film documentary about his career), and discuss his musical collaborations with Whitney Houston, Daft Punk, Eric Clapton, Herbie Hancock, George Harrison, Beyoncé and many more.
“When Ira sent me the recording of ‘Bass: The Final Frontier’ for me to add my parts to, it sounded so great I thought: ‘He really doesn’t need me on it,’ ” East recalled with a chuckle from his San Fernando Valley home.
“I put down a bass track fairly similar to what he had sent me. Ira heard it, and said: ‘No, I want you to do you and to stretch out and go for it.’ So I rerecorded my part at my studio, during lockdown, and sent it to him. I was surprised and very happy to learn they submitted it for Grammy consideration.”
East has been nominated for six previous Grammys as a member of leading pop-jazz band Fourplay. He also earned a nomination for his self-titled 2007 debut solo album. If “Bass: The Final Frontier” is nominated and receives enough votes, the UC San Diego alum could have his firstever Grammy win.
“It would be sort of ironic that it wasn’t for one of my own projects, but it would be amazing!” East said. “Leading a big band is a real labor of love, and I have a lot of admiration for Ira and his musicians.”
Country-music star Vince Gill, who is now a member of the Eagles, is one of the artists with whom East has collaborated. By coincidence, Liss independently reached out to Gill during the pandemic to ask if he’d like to record a track for the Big Band Jazz Machine’s next album, which will feature guest artists who rarely if ever record jazz. Gill enthusiastically responded that not only had he longed wanted to dip his feet into big-band music, but that he had written a song precisely for such an opportunity.
Had all gone as planned, Gill would have joined Liss and his band in October at San Diego’s Studio West to record Gill’s “I’m Counting on You,” which Liss describes as a slow swing tune. That recording session was