Big Band Holiday Swing From Svetlana and Her Big Band

Svetlana has been a featured soloist with several big bands (including Seth Weaver Big Band, Manhattan School Of Music Big Band, NY Jazz Academy Big Band and more), including her monthly residency at New York's legendary Zinc Bar, with Seth Weave Big Band.  Svetlana has premiered her own big band in Dec 2018 to a full house at the Zinc Bar with a thrilling holiday show!

Her big band combines classic big band sound, thrilling arrangements by the best NYC big band arrangers, and Svetlana's own captivating front woman stage presence and vocals! Svetlana’s Big Band sound reflects the idealism of vintage swing bands sounds but also provides thrilling experience that can be appreciated both by the jazz lovers and the 21st century modern audiences alike! 

Here is what Alan Young of New York Music Daily Had to say! “Svetlana charmed charmed an all-Manhattanite audience, fronting her big band Zinc Bar....  vividly channeled the deadpan vindictiveness of Ellington’s Do Nothing Til You Hear From Me, and balanced that with an exuberant take of It Had to Be You “

Lucid Culture echoes the sentiment: “Her original, It’s All Good, that made for the best song of the night.  It’s an update on classic 30s swing for the here and now. As she hit the chorus, she suddenly rose from a warmly enveloping calm to an eye-opening leap: “When you hear the big noise it’s not thunder or storm.” Then she took the audience groundward again: “It’s just the sound of my heart breaking.”  The song ended on a characteristically enigmatic note, a little defeated, a little defiant”



Svetlana also re-interpreted some classics from her Holiday EPK for this big band experience - here are some words by Michael Steinman from JazzLives that describes this work perfectly!

“The color and texture of her voice come through beautifully, as does the delightful music surrounding her.. Svetlana seems right at home with swing. She rides the rhythm easily; she invents new little melodic twists and turns without trying too hard. She sounds like a grown woman rather than a grown woman trying to be a little girl, and (no small thing) she has a pleasing voice, not thin or wandering around the pitch.. On this winter-themed CD — perfectly appropriate for a day like today when the temperature stayed at twenty-one degrees — she is accompanied by Jim Fryer, hot jazz trumpet, trombone, euphonium; Dalton Ridenhour, stride piano; Adrian Cunningham, vocal, clarinet, saxophone; Brandi Disterheft. string bass; Ted Gottsegen, guitar; Steve Little, drums.

At times I thought of a modern Fats Waller and his Rhythm (thanks to Dalton and Ted throughout), then of a hip Doris Day – Buddy Clark (BABY, IT’S COLD OUTSIDE), then a streamlined Ellington-based dance number (IT DON’T MEAN A THING), or a nifty Forties approach on LET IT SNOW. Some perfectly understated overdubbing — you wouldn’t notice it unless you looked at the personnel listings — is a special pleasure, because on one song we can hear Jim Fryer, trumpet, lead the way, while his benign twin Jim Fryer plays a splendid trombone part. My title is probably wrong: this is music for any of the twelve months, no matter what the temperature.”

Svetlana’s big band is available for concerts and holiday events throughout New York and beyond1