2018 release. The best week of the young composer/arranger Miho Hazama's life was a hectic one. In 2011, she was invited as one of eight arrangers from around the world to take part in the famed Metropole Orkest Big Band's residency program, led by the legendary Vince Mendoza. There were master classes and rehearsals all week for arrangements the residents would write, in four days, to be performed by the Big Band conducted by Mendoza and featuring vocalist Roberta Gambarini. The trial by fire was exhilarating and made Hazama crave another chance to arrange for the world's only jazz philharmonic orchestra. In 2017, Hazama got another chance to write for the Metropole Orkest Big Band when her project to arrange original pieces and orchestrate solo pieces by the pianist Thelonious Monk, in his centennial year, for the ensemble. The results of the collaboration can be heard on this recording, The Monk: Live at Bimhuis.
