After a formation period which included studies at the New England Conservatory of Music, where he was a student of Bob Brookmeyer, Darcy James (b. Vancouver, Canada, 1975) moved to Brooklyn, New York and, in 2005 he founded the big band Secret Society, gathering around him a remarkable group of musicians, namely the extraordinary saxophonist John Ellis. In parallel with his activity with the Secret Society, Darcy James also is the leader of the ensemble Jazzgroove Mothership Orchestra and collaborates regularly with some of the most prestigious big bands of the world, such as the WDR Big Band and the Contemporary Jazz orchestra of Cologne. His work as composer and musical director has been widely praised, having been considered by some jazz critics as an example of how the jazz orchestras of the future will sound.
Darcy James Argue released his first Secret Society’s album, entitled Infernal Machines, in 2009, and four years later he released its successor, Brooklyn Babylon, which was the result of a multimedia performance created by James Darcy with the artist Danijel Zezelj. Real Enemies, the composer’s most recent work, was also conceived as part of a multimedia performance, created in association with the writer and film director Isaac Butler, about the strategies of propaganda and vigilance of contemporary societies. The dystopic imaginary constitutes one of the most distinctive features of Darcy’s artistic vision, and his musical pieces are often supported by a narrative subtext of strong political meaning. The general tone of Argue’s compositions transmits an immersive sense of claustrophobia and paranoia, which is also an evocation of the classical film noir soundtracks and of the psychological atmospheres of the Cold War, now in its digital incarnation.
Darcy James Argue’s complex and multidimensional compositions are indicative of the composer’s deep knowledge of the big bands of the “golden age” of jazz and of its methods of melodic and rhythmic composition, which in Real Enemies are reconfigured through a myriad of musical influences and aesthetical contaminations – from post-rock to funk and minimal music, from the political cinema of the seventies to William S. Burrroughs, from Duke Ellington to Philip Glass. In that sense, one may be allowed to say that one of the most distinctive features of the composer’s music is its multireferentiality, in the sense that Argue’s compositions are perceived as a trigger of links and associations between different musical and textual elements, therefore emulating the creative strategies of collage and montage.
Widely imaginative, disquiet and vigilant, Darcy James Argue is a composer determined to create art committed to the here and now, and that only would suffice to prove its relevance. However, the exceptional musical quality of Darcy James Argue musical work also contributes to enhance this project to the level of artistic excellence.