Cliff Colon - ContraBand

==Tracklist==
01. Intro02. Jungle03. Base04. The Boss05. Waterfall06. Snow Field07. Energy Zone08. Alien Lair09. End Credits
==Notes==
Since the beginning of jazz, musicians have reworked songs familiar to nonjazz listeners and made them their own. Music from pop tunes, movie soundtracks and Broadway shows have been arranged and performed in a jazz format.
In honor of this tradition, tenor saxophonist Cliff Colón has created the album “ContraBand”, which contains jazz arrangements of the popular music from his youth, “video games”. In this case, the music is from the 1980′s side-scrolling, run & gun, 8-bit video game called Contra. Each track on the recording is Colón’s arrangement of the music of Contra, originally composed by Kyouhei Sada and Hidenori Maezawa from Konami Corporation (1988). The songs chronical each level (or stage) of the game, in sequential order. Colón has kept the melody, harmony lines, and overall feel of the compositions true to their original MIDI form, while still opening up the songs with jazz chord progressions to allow for improvised solos.
On the debut album “ContraBand”, tenor saxophonist Cliff Colón performs alongside fellow Seattle musicians J. Charles on alto saxophone, Frank Seeberger on guitar, Eric Verlinde on rhodes, Chuck Kistler on bass and D’Vonne Lewis on drums.
==Links==
* http://cliffcolon.com/?page_id=148
Category:Contra
Category:One game albums