BASCO & DR BIG BAND

Basco & DR Big Band

"March of The Frogs"

DR Big Band

Originally called the New Radio Dance Orchestra, in the early years the band was led by Ib Glindemann. But over the next few decades many new faces joined, such as Chris Potter, Thad Jones, Bob Brookmeyer Jim McNeely, and guest soloists like Miles Davis, Stan Getz, and Joe Henderson.

In 1964 the Danish broadcasting corporation Danmarks Radio (later abbreviated to DR) had a monopoly of both radio and TV broadcasting in Denmark. When Niels-Jørgen Kaiser, DR's head of entertainment, decided that DR had to have its own jazz band, it was without regard for economics. He wanted national radio to reflect that jazz was active in Copenhagen clubs. During the first few decades, the New Radio Dance Orchestra, which later became the DR Big Band, acquired a reputation that could attract popular jazz musicians.

With the fall of the radio and TV monopoly in the 1980s, and later when DR moved out to 'DR City' in the 2000s, the struggle for funding for DR's large orchestra became fierce. Chris Minh Doky, the band's artistic director, decided in 2008 to increase its visibility. Since then the DR Big Band has recorded with jazz musicians Randy Brecker, Chris Potter, and Mike Stern, but it has also appeared on the Danish version of the talent show X Factor, on the family series Sigurd & the Big Band, and on the show Circus Summarum.

BASCO
“Basco is a fiddle-scraping, box-belting, guitar-swinging, trombone-packing folk/roots band with an energy that has been compared to that of a bunch of sixth-graders on camp. It’s members met at the Carl Nielsen Academy of music in Odense, Denmark, and now play in all kinds of music of bands, both at home and away from home. So what they play in Basco is Danish music, and yet not…”

This is how Basco, one of Denmark’s most exciting roots and folk bands, define themselves on their website, and it’s a credible definition. Basco is a happy mix of jazz, folk and classical music, played on violin, viola, cittern, accordion, trombone – sometimes even a 3-piece brass section. Constantly developing, the band is not easy to categorise.

Hal Parfitt Murray, whose father is Scots and mother English, grew up in Australia, lives in Denmark, and plays violin and sings in Basco. Hal founded Basco in 2004, and he composes the majority of the group’s material. One summer’s day, in a little café in central Copenhagen, I meet Hal and his friend and colleague, violinist Andreas Tophøj, to hear all about Basco.