Interplay Jazz Orchestra,  Bite Your Tongue Review

By Jeff Becker

In the modern big band tradition, there are ensembles that foreground solo charisma, and there are ensembles that foreground the chart. On Bite Your Tongue, Interplay Jazz Orchestra makes its allegiance clear: the architecture of the arrangement and composition is the governing intelligence. What unfolds across these nine tracks is a sequence of big band vehicles with a sustained orchestral design, with an exploration of structure, voicing, and sectional logic stabilized in a wide spectrum of grooves and source materials.

The ensemble operates as a composer-arranger collective. With charts by Joey Devassy, Gary Henderson, Damien Pacheco, and Chris Scarnato, the album does not orbit a single orchestrational voice. Despite this plurality, the writing exhibits a coherent internal logic. Recurrent devices, shout choruses that crest through modulating harmonies, sax soli embedded mid-chart, sectional counterpoint that animates backgrounds behind soloists, and carefully tiered brass entries all function as structural signatures. One begins to recognize the band’s sound and their method.

Consider the title track, “Bite Your Tongue.” Its straight-eight propulsion carries echoes of hard-bop modernism refracted through late-’60s jazz-rock rhythmic nuances. The true drama lies in how the form is handled. A sax soli prepares the tenor entrance; the tenor solo pivots the feel into a samba-inflected section; and when the drum feature arrives, it does not rupture the architecture but interacts with pre-composed ensemble hits. The groove shifts are not ornamental; they are written transitions, articulated with intent. When the original feel returns, it does so as a structural resolution, making for an arcing story with a strong reprise.

“Go Figure,” composed by baritone saxophonist Chris Scarnato, extends this principle. What begins as a high-energy swing chart moves through Latin and fusion-tinged territories, yet the changes in rhythmic language are contained within a carefully proportioned formal arc. The chart opens in a driving swing feel, carried by Jay Orig, Dave Lobenstein, and Cameron Escovedo, before moving through Latin and fusion-tinged territories that are structurally placed rather than episodic.

After Alejandro Aviles’s tenor solo, a montuno section reorients the rhythmic center, briefly thinning the texture before the ensemble rebuilds. The drum solo that follows solidifies the architecture as Escovedo’s phrases unfold within melody consonances,  the big band enters and develops to ensemble responses that enter gradually, first lightly, then with increasing weight, culminating in a controlled call-and-response exchange. The groove shifts feel fluid, but their proportions are clearly determined by the chart.

Even when the orchestra turns to standard repertoire, the arrangement remains the animating force. “My Foolish Heart” opens with a bass drum pulse, a heartbeat beneath muted brass sonorities, before transitioning into a medium bossa. Trumpeter Damien Pacheco carries the melody with a centered tone and beautiful phrasing, while the feel change is architecturally interesting and provides varied textures. When the chart returns to ballad territory, muted brass and woodwinds deepen the harmonic warmth. A sax solo mid-chart redistributes melodic responsibility across the ensemble, functioning as a structural hinge opening further embellishment within the chart. The original song is not displaced; it is reframed through orchestral modulation of texture and weight, but all focused with a modern big band sound.

Throughout the album, solo sequencing reveals compositional intent. On “Blues for Adrian,” the progression from James Miceli’s alto saxophone to Baron Lewis’s trumpet and finally to Joey Devassy’s trombone is not incidental but graduated, expanding the ensemble’s timbral density with each step. Behind their bebop-inflected solos are ensemble background figures that move independently, thickening the harmonic field while preserving clarity of line. As layered entries accumulate beneath each soloist, the arrangement builds vertically before resolving into its next statement. The blues form remains stable; what evolves is the distribution of orchestral mass within it.

“Strasbourg-St. Denis” reinforces how sectional clarity stabilizes groove. Chris Donohue’s alto solo sits within a framework of carefully timed brass punctuations and descending figures that articulate phrase endings without overcrowding the line. Similarly, on “The Downside Up,” Alejandro Aviles’s tenor solo unfolds inside intertwined trumpet and trombone hits that outline the chart’s rhythmic turns. When the shout chorus arrives, it clarifies harmonic direction, amplifying energy by aligning the full ensemble’s weight with the structural apex of the form.

Across these tracks, groove becomes a structural variable to define form. Swing, straight-eight, samba, Latin inflections, and blues all appear; yet none destabilizes the album’s identity because the arrangements govern their placement and proportion. The orchestra’s balance between brass and woodwinds, its precision in sectional hits, and its consistent use of counterpoint establish a through-line that conveys specific stylistic categories.

There is a democratic elegance in how the big band distributes solo space. Brass and woodwinds alternate with deliberation; drums are integrated as structural participants rather than isolated showcases. The effect is cumulative: the ensemble functions as a platform for individual display within a coordinated organism. The charts have expanding and contracting settings around improvised voices. The planned movement before a shout chorus, the breath between layered entries, the slight thinning of texture before a groove shift, all of these negative space contours to decisively converge as climaxes.

In Bite Your Tongue, Interplay Jazz Orchestra demonstrates that contemporary big band vitality need not depend on surface novelty. It emerges from the intentionality of design. Arrangement is the frame within which improvisation acquires proportion. And in listening closely to transitions, counterpoints, and shaped climaxes, one discovers that the album’s most compelling voice speaks through structure itself.