Meet The Band: Staying Active and Setting a Higher Bar
STAYING ACTIVE &
SETTING A HIGHER BAR
A friendship enduring over thirty years with dedicated passions for music,
multi-instrumentalists Brendan Frank (guitar) and J. Golko (sax) have taken their live cocktail music act, Action Heights, into the virtual world with a series of independently produced music videos.
Their latest project, Final Fridays @ 5, began as a segment in a fundraising event for the band program of John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights (the city from which the moniker "Action Heights" derives).
Each month, the duo has recorded, mixed, and edited videos of tunes from their regular live set as well as expanded on orchestrations beyond their usual performance.
THE MAKING OF ACTION HEIGHTS’
“FINAL FRIDAYS @ 5”
For the past few years, Brendan has acted as a coordinator to a wine-tasting fundraiser for John Hersey High School's band program - assembling a jazz ensemble of alumni who had gone on to have careers in the music industry as music educators, recording artists, and touring performers.
During the rise of the "Age of Zoom," the tasting event turned virtual, and musicians were asked to upload video performances to replace what would have been a live show.
After having produced three videos for the fundraiser, the duo decided to continue recording in a similar structure and present them in a mini-series.
The sound of Action Heights brings together two distinct aspects of Americana - the language of rhythm and blues and the crossroads where the saxophone and the guitar encountered each other in history.
Together, the musicians sport an all-embracing palate of genres that have inspired and influenced their paths as artists for over 20 years.
During the creation of the Final Fridays @ 5 playlist, Action Heights walked the line between jazz and Top 40 music, now able to explore a bigger sound beyond their usual duet format.
The all-instrumental "FF@5" journeys through styles that are native to the guitar. Producer, J. Golko, reimagines this collection of lyric-based melodies with diverse interpretations for saxophone.
“COCKTAIL JAZZ”
(IT’S A THING)
Reuniting after graduating from the University of Illinois (Brendan) and Berklee College of Music (J. Golko) in 2010,
the long-time schoolmates brought their individual experiences to convergence for a few cocktail hour performances in the northern counties of Illinois.
At the dawn of 2015, just as they were getting in the swing of it, unique work opportunities summoned them both overseas to the East China Sea.
J. Golko sailed between the ports of Shanghai, China, and Southern Japan performing as an "Earth Harpist" on the Quantum of the Seas and Brendan took a one-year contract as an educator in Busan, South Korea in 2016.
Returning to the U.S. in 2017, they rebooted their jazz-themed cocktail production - broadening the timbres of guitar and saxophone to include bass and auxiliary percussion, as heard in their rendition of the Latin pop hit, "Bailamos," which features a dynamic and rhythmically impressive twelve-layers of live percussion recorded at Shadowcat Recording by Chicago-based rock music producer, Dan Hill.
In 2020, during a time when venues were unable to open their doors, the boost in virtual concerts led to the foundation of “Final Fridays @ 5.”
