The release last week of Red Rhinoceros, the debut recording by Bobby Selvaggio’s octet of the same name, completes a narrative right out of “Jurassic Park,” the Michael Crichton novel and blockbuster Steven Spielberg film about long extinct species recreated out of ancient DNA.
A quarter century ago, the octet was one of the most visible and exciting bands of its time. Selvaggio, then in his early 30s, stocked the band with fresh ideas acquired during his sojourn in New York, and with young players eager to prove themselves (one of them was a YSU student named Sean Jones). In time, some core members themselves left for New York and the ever-curious Selvaggio moved on to other projects. The Rhino fell silent.
But the book of music that fed the band’s steady gig on alternating Monday nights at the BOP STOP, remained, and it tugged at Selvaggio.
“Every now and then, musicians would talk about that group and [ask], Where’s the recording,” Selvaggio said on a video call last month. “The comments and compliments I’ve gotten about this music is that it sounds like it was written today. It’s still relevant today, and that it was time to document that time period for me as a composer, and to be able to do it in a way that how I look and perceive music today.”
That music was the DNA of the reconstituted octet that headed to BOP STOP last August to record (my preview of that gig is here). The results can be heard on Red Rhinoceros, released last week by Stephen Philip Harvey’s Hidden Cinema Records and available soon on Bandcamp. A quarter century after its founding, the band finally has its debut recording.
To celebrate, Selvaggio will bring the band to the Kent State University Design Innovation Hub Auditorium for a free concert at 7 p.m. Friday.
The music remains as strong, characterful and motile as ever, even though it is decades old. Yet the band has completely changed. Selvaggio is the only remaining member of the original octet, and that suits him just fine.
“I end up playing with a lot of younger musicians because they are the ones that are really listening, not only to the jazz music of that time period all the way up through today, but actively playing it, actively composing in it,” Selvaggio said.
The new octet features AJ Kluth on tenor and Bettyjeane Quimby on baritone sax and bass clarinet alongside Selvaggio’s alto and soprano in the reed section. Trumpeter Tommy Lehman and Zach Warren on trombone are the brass while guitarist Zakk Jones, Kevin Robert Martinez on basses, and drummer Zaire Darden hold down the rhythm.
“A lot of them have played in other projects of mine,” Selvaggio said. “To me it’s almost the same because they’re the same age as the musicians I was playing with back then. The only person that’s really older is me, you know?”
To Selvaggio, the change in perspective has been the spark of life that has reanimated the Red Rhinoceros octet—and perhaps by extension, his creative outlook.
“The whole point of composing music, as far as I’m concerned, is that you can write music for a certain person,” he said. “But music, like art, should be perceived and experienced by different people, because they’re going to give you a different perception of how you look at what you created.”
Bobby Selvaggio’s Red Rhinoceros, Friday, April 3, 7 p.m., Kent State University Design Innovation Hub Auditorium, 400 Janik Drive, Kent. Free.
For the most complete listing of jazz and jazz-adjacent events., look to Jim Szabo’s essential, weekly Northeast Ohio jazz calendar.
