Two O'Clock Lab Band: Return Two Paradise
North Texas Jazz
No doubt the students that join the jazz program at The University of North Texas are incredibly advanced players eager to start making music with their classmates. But their development is also dramatically facilitated through their association with the program's music director Rob Parton and the enthusiastic support and encouragement he and his colleagues give to them. Anyone hearing the school's Two O'Clock Lab Band will be awed by the professional calibre of the performances and the preternatural maturity demonstrated by the band personnel. And it's not only players we're talking about, as its new Return Two Paradise release also features material composed and arranged by UNT students. That the album's twelve tracks were culled from two live studio sessions with no overdubbed solos makes the accomplishment all the more impressive. Directed by Parton, two iterations of the Two O'Clock Lab Band appear, the one from 2025 and the other 2026, but both maintain an equally high level of performance.
Regardless of the band in play, execution is tight and the music delivered with authority, whether it be a high-energy statement or tender, vocal-enhanced ballad. An enticing, wide-ranging collection of pieces was chosen for the release, from originals by students Jack Lanhardt and Eric Ladish to covers of material by Randy Newman, Leonard Bernstein, Bob Brookmeyer, and even Dimitri Tiomkin. Adding variety and bolstering impact, instrumental arrangements couple with ones featuring, separately, vocalists Ava Ramsey and Georgia Barge.
Return Two Paradise begins, appropriately, with a blistering run-through of Lanhardt's “Hello!,” the pace furious and the band wailing. With bassist Claudia Easterwood, pianist Jacob Hanson, and drummer Simon Von Hatten at the wheel of the 2026 model, the ensemble soars, powering as it does through concise solo statements by trombonist Colin Manocchio, trumpeter Finn Sullivan, and baritone saxophonist Davis Miller. The 2025 outfit's no less strong, as shown by its muscular jazz-funk rendition of Steve Wiest's “Ork vs Dragon,” bassist Spencer Paulsen, pianist Brenin Coin, and drummer Zachary Johnson doing the honours this time and saxophonists Ryan Yumang (alto) and Aidan Schwarz (tenor) enlivening the performance.
From the Toy Story soundtrack, Newman's “You've Got a Friend in Me” receives a rousing swing treatment, with Ramsey's vocal as attractive as Lanhardt's big band arrangement. The film spawned a sequel, of course (plus many more), and also gave us Newman's poignant “When She Loved Me,” which delivers chills the moment Barge's inimitable voice enters. Graced with a velvety tone and impeccable phrasing and control, the vocalist makes every moment of her performance special. Ramsey distinguishes herself too, her soulful contribution to the UNT's sultry treatment of Tiomkin's “Return to Paradise” one of the best things about it, Ladish's arrangement and guitarist Jacob Landrum's solo also recommending the performance. Unless I'm mistaken, the version of Gershwin's “The Man I Love” on Return Two Paradise is the same as the one on the earlier UNT release Wisdom: The Music of Rich DeRosa at North Texas; however, featuring it twice is in no way objectionable when the rendition is so intimate and Barge's vocal again riveting.
Moving into its second half, the album presents two Bernstein pieces from West Side Story, with “Cool” and “Tonight” (both DeRosa arrangements) as slinky and snappy as they should be. Easterwood's nicely featured on the former, whereas the fleet solo by soprano saxophonist Nate Green helps elevate the band's high-flying take on “Tonight.” A smattering of sultry Brazilian flavour seeps into Ladish's “Siren's Dilemma,” while breezy run-throughs of Brookmeyer's “Make Me Smile,” Agustin Alonso's “Second Chance,” and Lanhardt's “Up and at ‘Em!” round out the release. Similar to Wisdom: The Music of Rich DeRosa, Return Two Paradise is admittedly longer than necessary, such that ten or even nine tracks would have sufficed in place of a dozen. Even so, the press release's contention that Return Two Paradise shows UNT jazz “producing at the highest level” turns out to be less hyperbole than an accurate assessment. The consistently solid performances on the release are proof enough of that, and the magic Parton and the students repeatedly get up to is impressive.August 2026