Zubatto Syndicate

“If you’re familiar with Gil Evans doing Hendrix, Danish band leader Pierre Dørge, Vancouver’s Hard Rubber Orchestra or Trevor Watts Moiré Music, you know this kind of genre-crunching little-big band territory.” Paul de Barros, Seattle Times.

The Zubatto Syndicate is a 12-piece ensemble under the direction of composer and guitarist Andrew Boscardin. This exciting group — a highly original take on the Big Band and jazz orchestra traditions — made its debut in 2009 at Town Hall Seattle. Featuring a unique synthesis of reed instruments and electric sounds, brass and electric guitar and bass, Zubatto targets the musical place where Maria Schneider meets the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and the Roots meet Radiohead by way of Mingus. The music combines detailed arrangements and inventive harmonic ideas with rhythmic settings and idioms atypical of the jazz orchestra, as realized by the some of the top improvising musicians in Seattle.
              

Zubatto Syndicate has been called “an utterly contemporary jazz big band. In fact, they’re so modern – they might as well be from the future” (Bandcamp)  and “a big band unafraid to foray into the modern pop idiom” (Seattle Times).  Zubatto’s 2009 debut performance was called “Big Band the way you’ve never heard it before” (Seattle Magazine). Of their debut recording, the  Utne Reader Music Sampler wrote “Big-band music hasn’t sounded this hip or vital in decades.”