Award winning jazz drummer Paul Spencer is a dynamic force in the Milwaukee live music scene.
Excerpt from Dave Luhrssen's article in the Shepherd Express February 6, 2008:
Jazz shouldn’t be this good anymore. At a time when many conservatory trained musicians have reduced a great American art form to a noodling string of solos held together on a fragile string of familiar melody, Paul Spencer has produced a contemporary big-band album showcasing many styles and moods. The solos emerge organically from a crack ensemble playing in a steady groove.
A heavy share of the credit for the Paul Spencer Band’s self-released CD, Level Groove, goes to guitarist Steve Lewandowski. He composed all nine pieces, whose sources range widely from throbbing Latin to easygoing echoes of New Orleans, from the sunny melodic side of hard bop to the genre’s faster and knottier edge. Level Groove is the sort of emotive yet carefully shaped musical cycle that Gil Evans once composed.
Spencer, a drummer with nine previous CDs on his résumé, takes charge of the rhythm arrangements for Lewandowski’s compositions. Trumpeter Jeff Pietrangelo arranged the brass and woodwinds. Remarkably, Level Groove is a live album recorded at two of Spencer’s favorite venues, Caroline’s Jazz Club and Potawatomi Bingo’s Northern Lights Theater. Spencer describes Lewandowski, whose day job is teaching math for MPS, as “receptive to letting his ideas develop.
But he is concerned, especially with the loss of Milwaukee’s jazz radio station, that younger generations aren’t being sufficiently exposed to the music. “What I do when I see a young crowd is bring the music to their level,” he explains.
“Hard bop, Latin jazz, anything with a groove. If you get them interested, they stay. If they like what they hear, they might want to go deeper.”
