The Souljazz Orchestra | Rising Sun – [Strut Records / Do Right! Music, 2010]
The Souljazz Orchestra picks up where the golden age of soulful music left off: they expand upon the rough and raw grooves of the 1960s and 1970s by taking on an eclectic, genre-bending approach, enriched by musical traditions stemming from both sides of the Atlantic. The resulting sound is enthralling and unique: a potent mixture of funk, soul, jazz, afro and Latin rhythms, supported by an arsenal of dusty vintage keyboards and driven by powerful horn-drenched melodies.
The orchestra was founded in 2002, when a group of young, like-minded musicians started meeting up regularly at some of the hipper downtown clubs in Ottawa. Some had played in jazz combos, others in rhythm & blues bands, others still in African or Latin ensembles. They began making plans to form a new collective that would combine their various musical interests with their particular world view and the Souljazz Orchestra was soon born.