John Hollenbeck reunites with the Hot Club Jazz Orchestra for Peace and Justice, a powerful large-ensemble recording shaped by resilience, international collaboration, and the urgent call for hope in turbulent times.
More than a decade after a memorable concert together in Lisbon, Hollenbeck and the orchestra began work on this project—recorded June 4–6, 2022 at Canoa Studios—just as international travel resumed following the pandemic. The album’s four-year journey was marked by extraordinary challenges: the orchestra’s historic club suffered a devastating fire and financial hardship, and a commissioned project in Kyiv was halted by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Yet from disruption emerged a recording that affirms connection, solidarity, and the transformative power of music.
Originally commissioned in late 2021 by Ukrainian curator Olha Bekenshtein, the project was intended to feature Hollenbeck’s arrangements of Ukrainian music. Although the original commission could not take place, its spirit resonates throughout the album. Two Ukrainian works anchor the recording, including “Red Shades,” Hollenbeck’s arrangement of the historic anthem “Oi u luzi chervona kalyna” (“Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow”), written in 1914 by Stepan Charnetskyi and revived in 2022 as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance. A second Ukrainian carol from the Kharkiv region, “In the Middle of the Yard,” builds hypnotically through repetition and evolution.
These works inspired the album’s title and its original centerpiece, “Peace and Justice”—a bold brass-and-rhythm statement written as both declaration and aspiration. As Bekenshtein writes in her liner notes, “Holding onto it, hoping for it, is something we must all actively practice.”
This is our Chosen One.