The Valentino Orchestra
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- Andrew Homzy
- Boris Khodorkovsky
- Bruce Lochhead
- Chester Doxas
- George Doxas
- Gerald Danovitch
- Jeff Fong
- Jim Doxas
- Michael Cartile
- Pamela Fong
- Yosef Tamir
The Valentino Orchestra | |
|---|---|
| Genres | Jazz |
| Years active | 1996–2002 |
| Labels | Just a Memory |
| Past members |
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The Valentino Orchestra is a Canadian 17-piece pre-swing style big band formed in Montreal in 1996 and led by musicologist and composer Andrew Homzy.[1] Gerald Danovitch was the lead alto player until he died in 1997.
The Valentino Orchestra—named after Rudolph Valentino—bases its repertoire of "sophisticated swing" on the American popular music—compositions by Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael, and the many others who in the Jazz Age established what is often called the Great American Songbook. Most of the music performed by the band was drawn stylistically from the period between the two world wars, and performed accordingly: often with exaggerated "old style" pre-swing era rhythm.[2]
The band performs the original musical settings of these songs: the arrangements that were written for the dance bands and hotel orchestras of the 1920s and 1930s, complete with the string section: two violins and a viola.
