Ed Palermo Big Band

From Aretha's horn section to a nine-piece of his own

Ed Palermo grew up in New Jersey and reached the big band by the long route, as a working sideman. Before he had an ensemble of his own he toured and recorded with Aretha Franklin, Tony Bennett, Tito Puente and Celia Cruz, wrote charts for the Tonight Show band and arranged a James Brown concert at the Hollywood Bowl. He began on alto saxophone, switched to tenor at college under the pull of Coltrane, Michael Brecker and David Liebman, then went back to alto, which is the horn he plays in front of his own band. The push towards arranging rather than simply soloing came from hearing Charles Tolliver's album Impact; the craft came from studying with the arranger Dave LaLama.

The band started in 1977 as a nine-piece and grew into a full orchestra. Its first home was Seventh Avenue South, where it held a three-year residency before Gil Evans took over the slot — a detail Palermo has never stopped finding funny. From 1987 to 1993 the group alternated between Visiones and the Bitter End, still playing something close to a conventional jazz-orchestra programme. The repertoire that made its name did not exist yet.

What Zappa's death started

Frank Zappa died in December 1993. Palermo, who had grown up on the Mothers of Invention alongside the Beatles and Edgar Winter, organised a tribute concert, and the turnout was far larger than anything the band had drawn playing its own book. That single night turned into a nine-year residency at the Bottom Line, running from 1994 to 2003 and built mainly on Zappa arranged for full big band. Nobody else was writing those charts.

The residency pulled in people from inside the source material: Mike Keneally, Zappa's last touring guitarist, and the singer Ike Willis both appeared as guests. The first recorded evidence was Big Band Zappa, issued on Astor Place in 1997. The band has since headlined the Zappanale festival in Germany four times, and Keneally remains part of the operation, guesting at the Iridium and playing on the most recent album.

The practical legacy of that decade is a band that can read anything. Zappa's writing demands odd metres, abrupt key changes and ensemble passages at speed, and a horn section drilled on it can be pointed at King Crimson or Bartók without much fuss. Palermo has used that, rather than settling into being a repertory tribute act.

The records

The run that built the band's reputation came out on Cuneiform: Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance in 2006, Eddy Loves Frank in 2009, OH NO!! NOT JAZZ!! in 2014, One Child Left Behind in 2016, The Great Un-American Songbook Volumes 1 & 2 in 2017 and The Adventures of Zodd Zundgren in 2018, the last of these splicing Zappa with Todd Rundgren. Alongside them, Electric Butter appeared on Jankland in 2014, a tribute to Paul Butterfield and Mike Bloomfield featuring Rob Paparozzi. DownBeat gave four stars to both OH NO!! NOT JAZZ!! and The Great Un-American Songbook.

From 2019 the band moved to Sky Cat Records. A Lousy Day in Harlem, released that year, drew a line from JazzTimes that Palermo still quotes: twenty-first century big-band music doesn't get more exciting and impressive than this. The Great Un-American Songbook Vol. III: Run for Your Life followed in 2020, mostly Lennon and McCartney with Procol Harum, the Moody Blues and Zappa folded in. I've Got News For You: The Music of Edgar Winter, with Robben Ford among the guests, came after it.

In the DownBeat poll's Rising Star category in 2018 the band was named third best band on the rise. The DownBeat feature that ran in January 2021, built around Run for Your Life, is still the clearest statement of method in Palermo's own words — "medleys and mashups, that's my thing" — and of his view of where he has ended up: how to be a happy musician without being famous, and that he is proof it is possible.

Prog vs. Fusion, and the state of things now

The current record is Prog vs. Fusion: A War of the Ages, released on Sky Cat on 18 April 2025. Seventeen tracks set progressive rock against jazz fusion as a staged argument: it opens with John McLaughlin's Resolution and takes in Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter's On the Milky Way Express, King Crimson, Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Steely Dan, the Police, Pat Metheny and Zappa, plus Palermo originals. Its most-cited track is a mash-up of Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun and Steely Dan's Bodhisattva, the grunge melody run through a syncopated swing feel. Mike Keneally guests on guitar.

Reviewing it for Paris-Move, Thierry De Clemensat called the writing audacious and inventive and put his finger on what the band does well — coherence held together with unpredictability — and recommended it to listeners who had never heard Palermo before.

Nothing has been announced to follow it. What the band has instead is a schedule: the official shows page carries dates through 2027, with 24 October 2026 at the Falcon, 23 November 2026 at the Iridium billed "Ed Gets a Brazilian", and 19 December 2026 back at the Falcon, under a standing instruction to check back and confirm. Earlier in the year, 25 April 2026 at the Falcon was billed "Eddy, You're a Beast" and set Emerson, Lake & Palmer against Zappa, Samuel Barber and Bartók; 1 June 2026 was an Iridium night. Palermo also teaches at Hoff-Barthelson in Scarsdale.

The people in the room

The band runs to roughly eighteen to twenty players, which is why the monthly cadence matters more than touring does — an orchestra that size does not travel cheaply. The current personnel listed by the band include Cliff Lyons, Phil Chester, Ben Kono, Bill Straub and Barbara Cifelli on saxophones; Augie Haas and Bobby Spellman on trumpets; Charley Gordon, Mike Boschen and Chris Olness on trombones, with Matt Ingman on bass trombone and tuba; and a rhythm section of Bob Quaranta on piano, Ted Kooshian on keyboards, Robbie Mangano and Bruce McDaniel on guitars, Paul Adamy on bass and Ray Marchica on drums. Katie Jacoby's violin, in since 2010, is what lets the band take on string writing and the more baroque prog material.

Several of these players have been in the chairs for decades — Adamy since 1994, Ingman for more than twenty years, McDaniel for over fifteen. McDaniel also sings, which is how rock lyrics get delivered without the band needing a front vocalist, and he arranges as well.