SHOWS AVAILABLE
TORMÉ 100
Tormé 100 celebrates Mel’s extraordinary contribution to jazz, film, and culture, telling his story with 20 legendary songs, while spotlighting the arrangers who help make Mel’s music sound so fresh all this time later.
As part of a special salute to fellow jazz centurion Marty Paich (also in his centennial year) James performs an Ella Fitzgerald arrangement by Marty that’s only ever been sung by Ella herself, and a Ray Charles arrangement that has only ever been done by Ray himself.
The show also introduces multiple brand new arrangements of songs Mel wrote (eg: Born to be Blue) to show where a new generation is taking Mel’s music in 2025.
If multimedia is a possibility, a special Mel personal history video & photo sequence can be part of the show.
Available with Jazz Orchestra, Big Band / 9-Piece ‘Little Big Band’ / Trio / Small group.
Featured songs include: Lulu’s Back in Town, Comin’ Home Baby, On The Street Where You Live, The Lady is a Tramp, Black Magic, Don’t Get Around Much Anymore, Whatever Lola Wants, Love For Sale, Sent for you Yesterday, The Way You Look Tonight, Down For Double, In The Evening When The Sun Goes Down and much more! (Featured arrangers: Johnny Mandel, Shorty Rogers, Bill Byers, Russ Garcia, Billy May, Bill Holman, Marty Paich and more).
A VERY TORMÉ XMAS: CELEBRATE THE 80TH anniversary of “the christmas song” ON MEL’S CENTENNIAL YEAR!
Celebrating AN INCREDIBLE MOMENT IN TIME…
On the year of Mel’s 100th birthday, celebrate the 80th anniversary of “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)”.
This swingin’ concert of winter classics features Mel’s own sophisticated versions of all the best winter classics arranged John Williams, Marty Paich, Bob Krogstad, Angela Morely, and Mel himself.
At the show’s climax, James fulfills a long-held family ritual: telling the story of, and then singing his father and Bob Wells’ legendary '“The Christmas Song”.
Written by Mel Tormé and Robert Wells in ‘45 then released in ‘46, it became Nat King Cole’s his biggest hit, and the first mainstream holiday song to be introduced by an African-American artist. A significant cultural breakthrough, the subsequent popularity of the song helped pave the way for other artists in music, film, sports and American life, at large.
Now considered a symbol for inclusivity in the arts, worldwide, was recently inducted into the Library of Congress. The libary commissioned James to write the account of the story behind The Christmas Song.
The intersection of these two markers in time provides a unique opportunity to celebrate.
*Available in Full symphony, big band or smaller configurations.
Mel & MARTY AT 100
Vocal jazz get no better. On the centennial year of both men, James Tormé celebrates the musical partnership between his father Mel, and arranger Marty Paich.
From the albums he arranged for Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Anita O’Day, Sammy Davis Jr. and Aretha Franklin to his piano playing with Stan Getz, Art Pepper, Stan Kenton, Shorty Rogers and countless others, Marty Paich proved time after time that he could access staggering levels of creativity.
However, many feel that Marty’s genius is best exemplified in the cool jazz albums he recorded with Mel Tormé.
From their very first outing together (It’s A Blue World, Bethlehem, 1955) it was clear Mel Tormé and Marty Paich had discovered something special. But the two young West Coast jazz pioneers advanced this something to another hemisphere when they invented a unique, 10-piece horn detail and recorded Mel Tormé and the Marty Paich Dek-tette, a year later.
With a sound that was partly inspired by Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool, the album (and several subsequent mid-century releases on the Bethlehem and Verve labels) turned the vocal jazz world on its head. Indeed, many attempts were made to catch the ‘Mel and Marty sound’ in a bottle (from Sinatra to Ella to Sammy Davis Jr.) but none quite measured up to the magic of its two founders, Tormé and Paich.
Utilizing his special access to the arrangements from the Tormé and Paich archives his unique family stories and knowledge, and his own award-winning vocal capabilities, James Tormé salutes the kinship, wizardry and even occasional contention between Mel, The Velvet Fog, and Marty, of the man they called The Picasso of jazz in this once-in-a-century show.
Can be performed with 11 piece (8-horns w/trio), 9-piece (6 horns w/trio) or trio/small group.
OTHER PAST PROGRAMS (AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST)
BORN TO BE BLUE
The rebirth of the late-night Playboy after Dark vocal jazz scene that once boasted Nancy Wilson, Sammy Davis Jr., Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae, James’ internationally sold-out Born To Be Blue brings the very artists and songs that inspired his own jazz journey soaring back into our minds and hearts like never before.
*Can be performed with jazz trio, quartet or quintet.
DIG THE DUKE, DIG THE COUNT
First half Ellington, second half Basie. Tormé all the way.
A stunning big band reinvention of Mel Tormé’s legendary 1961 Verve LP , arranged by the great Johnny Mandel, Dig the Duke, Dig the Count is comprised of twelve songs from the album in their original order, plus a few other Basie/Ellington surprises. It’s the perfect canvas for James to inject his own instincts and style, as he pulls new colors, textures, and moods out of a collection of Basie and Ellington arrangements that cannot be heard anywhere else.
THE BIRTH OF THE WEST COAST
James salutes the music that defined California’s West Coast (aka Cool Jazz) sound, while uncovering new magic from this indelible chapter in jazz history.
From Nat ‘King’ Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Anita O’Day, Chet Baker, Lou Rawls, Miles Davis and Peggy Lee, to James’ own father Mel, Birth Of The West Coast shines light on a myriad of legendary West Coast singers and their arrangers, putting all these great artists into perspective.
*Can be performed with Big Band, Dek-tette (8 horn jazz group), Little Big Band (with 6 horns) or smaller formats, including jazz quintet, quartet and trio.
EAST ON MELROSE
“The feeling of the Eighties is back in L.A. But it’s different this time.”
James Tormé’s East On Melrose LP and eponymous West Cost collective offers a blissfully fresh, sophisticated exploration of pop-jazz-fusion, centered around the songwriting of Tormé (vocals), keyboardist Robert Turner (Dr. Dre, Stevie Wonder) and Grammy winning drummer Lyndon Rochelle (Esperanza Spaulding). Instantly discernible are some of the swathe of childhood British and American influences often mentioned by Tormé in the past — Michael Jackson. Prince. Wang Chung. Steely Dan. Earth Wind & Fire. Michael McDonald. Tormé’s songs seem to be imbued with the soul and sophistication of an era when these acts were at their absolute peak. Yet there is no attempt here to copy anything that’s been done before. One is confronted by an unusual occurrence in todays’s music scene: brand new music that feels and sounds as good as what once was.
Tormé recounts the project’s genesis, “A few summers ago I was feeling some severe creative frustration. I called Bobby and convinced him to write some tracks with me. I hadn’t seen (or talked to) him in like 13 years. Robert had moved to China for as almost a decade, in order to tour out there. I’d always thought of him as a musical genius. So when somebody told me he was back in the Western Hemisphere, I made it my business to track him down.
Bobby and I agreed to do ‘a reunion project’ together, and right away a steady flow of musical concepts started streaming into my phone from his, day and night. The feeling coming back together after such a long time apart helped create nostalgia for the project. Robert had come up with a unique, synth bass-driven Minneapolis/Philly-derived, retro-future sound, which he now augmented with chord progressions that could have come from Jimmy Jam and Teddy Riley in the late 8o’s, or even Rod Temperton a decade earlier. I loved it all, and wrote songs pretty much as fast as he could tracks to me. Crucially, neither of us over-thought what we were doing, at any point. We just stayed on our specific little journey. But we both knew something special was happening. Then Lyndon came on board on drums. He is so talented, it’s literally disturbing.”
EOM’s debut appearance at Bottlerock Music Festival 2022 in Napa Valley garnered a stellar response.
The eponymous album is set for release in late 2025.
““This s**t is retro-future 🔥.
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