DIVA

DIVA BIG BAND

Sherrie Maricle Bern 1998

When Sherrie Maricle was in the fourth grade she wanted to play the trumpet. “I was told that girls didn’t play the trumpet and my choice was either the flute or the clarinet,” she says. Sherrie didn’t like playing the clarinet and she didn’t like her music teacher, either. “I was thinking that maybe I wouldn’t do music anymore.” In the seventh grade, another teacher took Sherrie to see Buddy Rich. “I remember sitting in the last row of the balcony and when they played the first note being covered in goosebumps just thinking, `Oh!’ That’s what I want to do,” she says. “I ran home and I told my mother that I was going to be a drummer, a big-band drummer. My mother thought it was a phase.”

Not only did Sherrie become a drummer, she also formed her own big band, DIVA, an all-female group of talented musicians that is now appearing at Arena Stage in Maurice Hines Is Tappin’ Through Life. The musicians back up Maurice and the other dancers with a bold, brass sound that has the audience clappin’ and tappin’ along. “When I was growing up there were big bands on the road all the time and now there just aren’t,” says Sherrie. “A lot of times people are like, `wow, we haven’t seen this in a long time.’ I think the energy can be felt by the audience.”

The energy evident with the all female band is “very strong.” She adds: “It’s powerful and, at the same time, it’s enthusiastic as in the nature of women giving and nurturing at the same time. We’re supportive of Maurice and certainly of each other. And I think the energy can be felt by the audience. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we’re always grateful to be there and getting to perform this music together.”

Sherrie says that Maurice’s current show came together gradually over time. “It’s something that we’ve been talking about and has been evolving for over 20 years, the chronology of his life dance activity which he spent his entire life doing. He was constantly talking about music and those entertainers that have inspired him and influenced his life.”

Hines will turn 70 in December and like so many others, Sherrie admires his energy and stamina. “I think part of being in the business that we’re in, it keeps you very young,” she says. “He really does love the audience and that energy exchange between everybody on the stage and those in the theater seats is the key to his energy and his enthusiasm and actually his youthfulness. It’s something he loves doing.”

In April and May the DIVAs will travel with Maurice Hines Is Tappin’ Thru Life to Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Cleveland. But the band has another exciting opportunity coming up in January. “We are going to be recording all of the music for the Macy’s July 4th Fireworks Show on NBC,” says Sherrie, adding that the group will also be writing a lot of the music. Macy’s likes to change up the theme of its spectacular fireworks display show each year. In 2014, the theme will be jazz. “It’s a huge exciting project; we are definitely going to be rehearsing for that in December,” Sherrie says. One fascinating fact she discovered: the music is written first and the fireworks are choreographed to compliment the music. “It was suggested that when we do our arrangements we think about the bombs bursting in air, how fireworks look in the sky, and try to think of musical things to accompany that.”

DIVA commissions all of its music. “You’ll never see DIVA playing an arrangement of anyone else’s,” says Sherrie. DIVA has a new CD coming out in early 2014 recorded at Lincoln Center and featuring Nancy Wilson and Marlena Shaw, “two of the most glorious, swinging diva voices in jazz.” DIVA’s smaller group has a CD that was recorded at the country’s oldest jazz club in the Delaware Water Gap in Pennsylvania called the Deer Head Inn.

With all the places she performs whether with or without the DIVAs, which one is her favorite? “My favorite jazz club is definitely Dizzys Jazz at Lincoln Center,” she says. “I love the times we’ve been featured at Carnegie Hall with the New York Pops. I play in that orchestra all the time so just to play in Carnegie Hall is such a blessing and a miracle. It’s an incredible venue and the reverence that I have putting my feet on that stage, it’s pretty overwhelming sometimes.”

DIVA members also play with other bands, including top military bands. And Sherrie has two other bands, Five Play (above), DIVA’s sister group comprised of the large ensemble’s rhythm section and two of its foremost soloists, and the DIVA Jazz Trio, with Tomoko Ohno, piano, and Noriko Ueda, bass. Sherrie also performs with The New York Pops.

Sherrie says when putting together the band for the Maurice Hines show, it was “a miracle” that key DIVA members lived in Washington. Theater rules require that a certain number of union members from Washington be used in a DC production. Washington-based musicians include Liesl Whitaker, lead trumpet player; Jennifer Krupa, trombone; Leigh Pilzer, baritone saxophone; Camille Thurman, tenor saxophone; and Amy Shook, bass. Musicians from New York besides Sherrie, include Jami Dauber, trumpet and Sharel Cassity, lead alto saxophone. The pianist, Janelle Gill, is not a DIVA member, but Sherrie praised her talents. “It was the first time we worked with Janelle, but she could really swing; she’s a great player.”

Within the show, each member of the band is given the opportunity to shine. “It’s really important for me to feature every woman in the band because each has a great unique talent,” she says. “It certainly makes the players feel an engagement, that we appreciate them, and then allowing the audience to appreciate them, too, as individuals.”

Liesl Sagartz, Louise Baranger, Ingrid Jensen, Elaine Burt (tp) Lolly Bienenfeld, Audrey Morrison, Lee Hill Kavanaugh (tb) Sweet Sue Terry, Carol Chaikin (as) Virginia Mayhew, Laura Dreyer (ts) Claire Daly (bar) Janice Friedman (p) Mary Ann McSweeny (b) Sherrie Maricle (d,ldr,arr) Michael Abene, John LaBarbera, Tommy Newsom (arr)