PAUL JOST
Jazz singer and multi-instrumentalist Paul Jost will make a live recording of his jazz version of Bruce Springsteen’s classic Born to Run album at The Bitter End in New York, Oct. 18.
Tickets are $18 at the door, $15 in advance; visit ticketfly.com.
Jost, who lives in Vineland, was commissioned to put together a new take on Born to Run by Michael Kline, producer of Exit Zero Jazz Festival in Cape May, and performed at the festival in May 2015. He arranged the music with Barry Miles, and will be backed at the concert by Jim Ridl (piano), Tony Miceli (vibraphone), John Swana (electronic valve instrument, aka EVI), Chico Huff (bass) and Donald Edwards (drums).
Reviewing Jost’s performance of Born to Run at 55 Bar in New York in August 2015, I wrote that he “deconstructed and then reconstructed Born to Run, ignoring certain riffs but building on others and letting them take him and his bandmates to new places. He’s stretched Born to Run out in a way that makes this piece feel both very familiar and very new.”
Throughout his career, Jost has reinterpreted quite a few classic rock songs, including Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” and Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” in a jazz way.
“When I do this arranging sort of thing with other songs, whether they’re standards or pop tunes, or whatever, I try to bring a different approach to it, so that people hear the lyrics in a different way,” he told NJArts.net in 2015. “I’m not just banging it out. I’m really trying to embrace it, and make a little bit of a statement. I’m hoping that if Bruce heard some of this stuff, he’d say, ‘Yeah, that’s cool, I like that.’ ”
To watch what Jost does with Born to Run, visit youtube.com/watch?v=I3xwzthSkrM (the video can’t be embedded). For information on him, visit pauljostmusic.com.
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