In 1981 the Music Department at Fullerton College built a 16 track in house recording facility which was to serve as a teaching tool for both student music groups and students wanting to take recording technology classes at a vocational level. Soundtrack is the sixth of several albums to come out of this studio to feature the award-winning Fullerton College Jazz Band. The CD contains tracks from two of the Fullerton College jazz groups: Jazz Band I and Vocal Jazz. The #1 jazz band was the winner of the 1985 International Association for Jazz EducationDisneyworld Competition and the opening band for the 1985 Playboy Jazz Festival and the LP/CD recordings to date are recipients of numerous Down Beat and NARAS Awards.[1]
Albert Marx, who was the owner of Discovery Records/Trend Records AM-PM label, became very impressed with the band four years earlier and the level of the music coming from the jazz groups at Fullerton College.[2] He decided to support the younger, up and coming jazz students/players from the greater Los Angeles/Southern California region by producing certain LPs and CDs.
"...vocal director Brent Pierce handles the FC Vocal Jazz ensemble with skill and the featured faculty vocalist Sunny Wilkenson is a soulful singer whose phrasing is slightly reminiscent of Stevie Wonder. Soundtrack is a digital recording and the engineering is top flight...Some of the student soloists who impress include David Allen, Aiphonse Mosse and John Hancock. The faculty soloists also demonstrate a firm grasp of big band soloing. The ensemble passages benefit from crisp execution and the arrangements reveal hard work and rehearsal. A blind-folded listener would probably have difficulty distinguishing between Soundtrack and the work of any number of contemporary (professional big band CDs)..."
