Jazz Articles about Joe Elefante

Take Five with Pianist / Composer Joe Elefante

by AAJ Staff
November 5, 2024

About Joe Elefante: Joe has traveled 4 continents playing and conducting jazz and musical theater. Joe founded the Joe Elefante Big Band in 2001, which was the house band at Cecil's Jazz Club for three years, and was featured on ABC's Nightline and in the Wall Street Journal. He was named a Jazz Ambassador by the Kennedy Center, and has toured Eastern Europe and the Middle East as a jazz pianist for the U.S. State Department. He has also been ...

The Joe Elefante Big Band: Vanity Fair

by Jack Bowers
February 7, 2005

Pianist/composer Joe Elefante's New York City-based big band has been quite favorably received by the local media, and now we can hear why--well-built ensemble, impressive soloists, splendid arrangements by Elefante, who assembled all the charts on the band's debut album, Vanity Fair, and wrote everything save Ray Noble's “The Touch of Your Lips."

“Lips," usually played as a ballad, is an arresting example of Elefante's innovative approach, as the tempo is accelerated and the familiar melody bracketed by free-form exchanges ...