Remy Le Boeuf had a long drive ahead of him when he moved from Brooklyn, New York, to Denver a year and a half ago. He and his partner loaded up a 16-foot Penske truck, which didn’t have a way to plug in his phone, or any other external audio component.
So, they listened to the radio on the entire journey.
“There was a lot of Top 40 stuff, and we played the “Indie or Christian Rock?” game, the saxophonist, bandleader and educator said. “There isn’t a lot of jazz in the middle of the country.”
After settling in as the Director of Jazz and Commercial Music Studies at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music, Le Boeuf discovered he’d absorbed much of the music heard on the radio from that trip. Those sounds served as the basis of inspiration for his new album, “Heartland Radio,” out this month on the SoundSpore record label.
It’s a beautifully produced set of songs, with vivid solos from Le Boeuf on alto saxophone and flute in a large band setting. The open-hearted nature of the compositions and performances make for an accessible listen that may be well-suited for your next road trip. Or you could take it all in at home.
“I didn’t want to make this a pure jazz album,” Le Boeuf tells me. “My brother (twin sibling and co-producer, keyboardist Pascal) and I do a lot of interesting production stuff on our records. On the track ‘Barbara’ we overdubbed guitars and panned them to the left, right and center so there was this surrounding warmth.”
But this is not an instrumental pop album, as there are numerous elevated moments of exploratory solos from the bandleader and side people involved in the project.
“We want to always keep the magic of the moment in each song,” he explains. “We go into the studio and capture the conversation, and the production highlights the special moments.”
Le Boeuf is bringing in some of his New York bandmates, as well as “some of my favorite people here in Denver” for two shows at Denver’s Dazzle on March 9. Listeners should expect an onstage outpouring of warmth and sincerity.
“That’s just who I am,” he says. “I fall back on sincerity. It’s something I value in the music I listen to. I find a lot of joy in making music, and I think that joy translates.”
(Remy Le Boeuf’s Assembly of Shadows, 6:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. Saturday, March 9, at Dazzle, 1080 14th St. Tickets are $25-35 and can be found at dazzledenver.com.)
Special EFX appears at the Lakewood Cultural Center on March 9…on Fridays in March, the Jeremy Wendelin Quintet pays tribute to the historic collaboration between Bud Powell and Dexter Gordon…the Blue Note Records 85th Anniversary Tour, with Gerald Clayton, Immanuel Wilkins, Joel Ross, Kendrick Scott and Matt Brewer, visits Dazzle on March 7 and the Riverwalk Center in Breckenridge March 8…Tatiana Lady May Mayfield sings at Dazzle March 22…Tigran Hamasyan brings his group to the Boulder Theater on March 27, and Spyro Gyra appears there March 30…beloved guitarist John Scofield and his Trio takes to the Dazzle stage April 4-5…I know a lot of Coloradoans are headed to the adventurous Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tenn., March 21-24. High on my list of acts to take in are guitarist Mary Halvorson, drummer Ches Smith’s Laugh Ash project, which has an exciting new album out on Pyroclastic Records, Tomeka Reid, Myra Melford and saxophone-composer royalty Henry Threadgill. Find out more at bigearsfestival.org.
