EYAL VILNER BIG BAND ANNOUNCES A VERY SW!NG OUT HOLIDAY — A 13-TRACK CELEBRATION OF FRIENDSHIP, COMMUNITY, MUSIC AND DANCE
ARRANGER AND BANDLEADER EYAL VILNER REIMAGINES CHRISTMAS, HANUKKAH AND NEW YEAR’S FAVORITES THROUGH SWING-ERA BIG BAND, BEBOP, HARD BOP AND JAZZ DANCE
FEATURING VOCALIST IMANI ROUSSELLE AND TAP DANCER AND CHOREOGRAPHER CALEB TEICHER
OUT NOVEMBER 6
A Very SW!NG OUT Holiday is the forthcoming album by the Eyal Vilner Big Band, led by saxophonist, clarinetist, flutist, composer and arranger Eyal Vilner. Due November 6, the 13-track collection brings Christmas, Hanukkah and New Year’s repertoire into the musical and social world Vilner has developed through his long-running big band and the stage production SW!NG OUT. Produced, arranged and orchestrated by Vilner, the album features Vilner along with Imani Rousselle on vocals; trumpeters John Lake, Summer Camargo, Brandon Lee, Anthony Hervey and Wayne Tucker; trombonists Willie Applewhite, Joe Giordano and Becca Patterson; reed players Mark Lopeman, Jordan Pettay, Julieta Eugenio, Ricky Alexander and Josh Lee; pianist Luther S. Allison; bassist Ian Hutchison; drummer Eran Fink; and Caleb Teicher on tap shoes.
“A Very SW!NG OUT Holiday is a celebration,” Vilner says. “Celebration of friendship, community, family, music and dance. Reimagining the holiday classics in a fresh, original, soulful and swinging new way.” Musically, that means Swing-era orchestration, bebop harmonic sophistication and hard-bop punch and soulfulness, filtered through Vilner’s longstanding interest in jazz as dance and social music. The title itself is what Vilner calls a “playful holiday greeting” from the world of SW!NG OUT, which has appeared regularly at the Joyce Theater in New York and toured the country for the past five years.
Born in Tel Aviv, Vilner moved to New York in 2007 and formed the Eyal Vilner Big Band the following year. His warm alto sound reflects deep study of Johnny Hodges, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Don Byas and Benny Carter, while his writing draws from Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn and Tadd Dameron, as well as classical composers including Ravel and Debussy. Since its formation, the ensemble has performed at Lincoln Center, the Guggenheim, Birdland, Dizzy’s Club, Smalls, the Joyce Theater, Minton’s Playhouse, Harlem Jazzmobile and Central Park SummerStage, while building an international profile through performances in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Vilner introduced the ensemble on 2012’s Introducing the Eyal Vilner Big Band, combining original writing with bebop, standards and large-ensemble arranging. Almost Sunrise followed in 2015, broadening that language through repertoire associated with Ellington and Strayhorn, Jimmy Owens and Clark Terry alongside Vilner’s own compositions. The 2016 release Hanukkah brought traditional Jewish holiday melodies including “Maoz Tzur” and “Oh Hanukkah” into his big-band vocabulary.
With 2019’s Swing Out!, Vilner’s growing involvement with Lindy Hop and vernacular jazz dance began directly reshaping his writing and arranging; the album was recorded with dancers moving as the musicians played. That connection took another form on 2021’s Live in Washington Square Park!, drawn from outdoor performances during the pandemic. The Jam! followed in 2022, inspired in part by jam meetings Vilner led with dancer Gaby Cook and by the creative ecosystem surrounding SW!NG OUT, where musicians and dancers increasingly operated as improvising partners. Vilner credits the Joyce Theater with giving that work a home in which the music and movement could continue developing together.
On 2024’s Swingin’ Uptown, Vilner placed Harlem and the historic relationship between jazz and jazz dance at the center of the band’s music. Then came 2026’s Big Apple Stomp, an 18-track portrait of New York built from Harlem ballrooms, Lower East Side speakeasies, street parties, jazz clubs, subway rides and late-night hangs. “For us, playing this music is not about being nostalgic,” Vilner said of that album. “It’s not about recreating another era. The beat, the groove, the dance, these are essential parts of the tradition of music. To me, it’s not only the history — it’s also the future of jazz.”
A Very SW!NG OUT Holiday brings those strands together through holiday repertoire Vilner first explored a decade earlier, refracted through the big band, the dance floor and the musical community around SW!NG OUT.
The album opens with “Sleigh Ride,” almost like a fairy tale: Luther S. Allison’s piano suggests the warmth of a living room around the fireplace. The horns then enter in turn, presenting different characters before the ensemble comes together and swings. Dancer and choreographer LaTasha Barnes hears an undercurrent reaching toward Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas.” “Sleigh Ride is so love, family, together-with-you and let’s party-coded that I almost cannot contain myself when I hear it,” Barnes says. “It really brings the fullness of our holiday magic into one rich and swinging soundscape.” Brandon Lee and Willie Applewhite take the featured solos.
On “Deck the Halls,” Vilner takes a melody traditionally sung in a cheery way and gives it a deeper, bluesier color, changing the tempo and overall feel while placing the saxophones against muted brass. Baritone saxophonist Josh Lee opens the chart and later develops its themes in his solo before trombonist Joe Giordano drives the performance toward the shout chorus. Brandon Lee hears Vilner’s deep study of Ellington and Strayhorn throughout, particularly in its overall arc: the music peaks late, then gradually slows as though “a train is entering the station.”
Vocalist Imani Rousselle enters on “Frosty the Snowman,” recalling childhood memories of hearing her mother sing the song in the car. Vilner places the opening melody in the saxophones while the brass dart around it, a texture Rousselle says evokes children playing in the snow. Jordan Pettay and Luther S. Allison take the featured solos. “As a Lindy Hop dancer, this is exactly the kind of music that makes social dance floors come alive, allowing us to be joyful, playful, and lost in happiness,” says Evita Arce. “It captures the magic of Christmas in New York, and wraps timeless holiday nostalgia with the musical history of the city’s jazz tradition.”
Frank Loesser’s “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” centers Rousselle’s vocal in a warm setting that moves from intimate passages to a climactic shout chorus, setting up solos from Julieta Eugenio, Willie Applewhite and Josh Lee. Trumpeter Summer Camargo connects the track to childhood Christmas seasons spent listening to SiriusXM’s ’40s Junction channel, singling out the subtle gospel inflection Rousselle brings to the song.
Vilner first recorded “Maoz Tzur” on 2016’s Hanukkah. Here, he revisits the traditional melody with colors that bassist Tal Ronen hears in dialogue with Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite. Ronen has even carried Vilner’s harmonic ideas from the piece into his own family holiday gatherings, slipping its minor and diminished chords into the song at home. Vilner and Anthony Hervey take the featured solos. “The trumpets lilt, the saxophones grit, the trombone sings, the atmosphere is positively festive and welcoming, filled with light, just like our holiday table,” Ronen says. “It is a swinging pleasure to hear our tradition put to such a lovely dancing beat.”
“Blue Christmas” pairs Josh Lee’s baritone saxophone with Ricky Alexander’s clarinet, with pianist Luther S. Allison taking the featured solo. Alexander points to Vilner’s reharmonization at the song’s climax and describes his own role as something like “backup singer, but in a New Orleans dirge.” Lee hears the track as an example of Vilner’s approach to older material: “Eyal’s compositions and arrangements are ingenious and boundary-pushing but they also serve a purpose: They aren’t meant as museum pieces or romanticizations of a bygone era, but are an active part of a living, breathing dance community.”
Vilner’s original “Comté Fruité” opens with playful exchanges, short flourishes passing around the ensemble before the music begins shifting through tempos, triplets and hemiola-like motion. Barnes knew the piece through the SW!NG OUT stage production, where its rhythmic framework gave dancers room to respond in real time. Trumpeter Wayne Tucker points to the studio version’s changing tempos and soloistic turns, while Barnes describes the challenge of keeping pace with the musicians’ precision as “gleefully exhausting.” Vilner takes the featured alto solo.
On “Christmas Night in Harlem,” Rousselle joins soloists Julieta Eugenio and Anthony Hervey. Dancer and Harlem community leader Julia Loving pictures a winter-night stroll down Lenox Avenue. “Eyal’s big band carries the living spirit of Harlem’s jazz and swing tradition, connecting generations of musicians, dancers, and audiences through that shared energy,” Loving says. Rousselle, she adds, brings “warmth, personality, excitement, and heart” to music that “makes you want to get up, find your partner, and celebrate.”
On Vilner’s “Coffee Bean Stomp Jubilee,” Caleb Teicher joins the band on tap shoes, their second tap collaboration after “Tap Tap Tap,” from the album The Jam!. Rather than repeat the earlier approach, Vilner and Teicher built the piece around shifting relationships between music and movement. “Who leads and who follows? How does our sense of meter affect our sense of humor?” Teicher says. “I love where we landed because we’re leaning heavily on the ‘play’ that’s inherent in playing music.”
“Winter Wonderland” begins in an impressionistic atmosphere, creating a sense of enchantment that continues when Rousselle enters. Vilner then steers the music toward the dance floor with original swinging figures, while pianist Luther S. Allison takes a featured solo before Rousselle returns. She pinpoints one of the chart’s clearest reference points: “Winter Wonderland with a taste of ‘Shiny Stockings,’ you can’t beat that! It’s both cozy and grandiose, with a little bit of a bite at the end — a brass section with plungers at the ready is always a good time.”
Rousselle remains at the microphone for “Oh Hanukkah,” which Vilner first recorded on 2016’s Hanukkah and now recasts as the album’s main-set finale. The big, hard-swinging chart gathers several strands of the record into a final surge, capped by a built-in chaser in a Swing-era style. On the closing vamp, Rousselle and trumpeter Anthony Hervey trade phrases while Vilner builds backgrounds behind them and leads the horns into a collective improvisation. After the climax, drummer Eran Fink kicks the tempo forward in a Gene Krupa-like burst and drives the band into one last fanfare. Multi-instrumentalist Mark Lopeman hears the music drawing from several styles while remaining fully integrated, with Rousselle delivering a soulful performance and tenor saxophonist Ricky Alexander stepping forward for a brash, articulate solo.
After that main-set finale, “Auld Lang Syne” arrives like an encore. Its opening returns to the intimate piano atmosphere of “Sleigh Ride,” bringing the program full circle. The trombones then enter with gospel- and church-inflected sonorities. From there, Vilner folds New Orleans brass-band colors, modern harmonies, soul and swing into big-band shouts, ensemble improvisation and back-and-forth exchanges. Rousselle’s voice enters toward the end, adding another human layer to the gathering. Jordan Pettay and Anthony Hervey take the instrumental solos. For Allison, who has worked extensively with Vilner both onstage and compositionally, the piece reflects the rapport the band has developed over time. “It’s rare to play with a group who has developed so much chemistry that even a studio recording date can possess nearly the same amount of excitement as a live performance,” he says. Having helped influence the direction of “Auld Lang Syne,” he adds, was an honor.
The brief “Auld Lang Syne – Reprise” plays almost like a hidden-track glimpse of the band after the formal performance has ended. Rousselle and Teicher return as the musicians and dancers slip into the kind of informal gathering that has become a tradition after SW!NG OUT performances: with the curtain down and the stage coming apart, they keep singing, playing, dancing, hugging and coming together. Preserved on record, the moment becomes a final snapshot of the relationships behind the music.
Recorded at Bunker Studios in Brooklyn on January 13, 2026, A Very SW!NG OUT Holiday was engineered by Alex Conroy, with Jasper Leach assisting, and mixed by Michael Perez-Cisneros.
That closing sense of fellowship carries particular poignancy because A Very SW!NG OUT Holiday also contains Perez-Cisneros’ final work. Vilner’s longtime mixing engineer and collaborator died suddenly days before the album was completed. Perez-Cisneros had worked with Vilner for roughly 15 years. “I knew I could always trust him,” Vilner says. “He was THE sound of my albums over the past 15 years. I’m grateful to have worked with him and to have his incredible sound work on this album too.”
That gratitude ultimately folds back into the spirit at the heart of the record: music as a way of bringing people together. “May this album bring joy, love, and light to your homes and communities,” Vilner says. “Happy holidays!”
Tracklisting
- “Sleigh Ride”
- “Deck the Halls”
- “Frosty the Snowman”
- “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?”
- “Maoz Tzur”
- “Blue Christmas”
- “Comté Fruité”
- “Christmas Night in Harlem”
- “Coffee Bean Stomp Jubilee”
- “Winter Wonderland”
- “Oh Hanukkah”
- “Auld Lang Syne”
- “Auld Lang Syne – Reprise”