Brian Culbertson was a 20-year-old student at DePaul University recording demos in his bedroom "studio" in a crowded apartment that he shared with three roommates above a costume shop on a busy Chicago street. Those demos not only landed the then trombone player in DePaul's jazz ensemble a record deal, but they were released a year later - February 1994 - as part of his debut album, Long Night Out, on which Culbertson played most of the instruments himself. Twenty years later, he's an award-winning hit recording artist, songwriter, and producer who is revisiting that first collection of songs in a brand-new album as Another Long Night Out, and this time he'll be accompanied by many of the contemporary jazz artists who influenced him when making the original.
Culbertson's recent chart-topping releases have primarily been excursions aboard R&B and funk grooves, thus Another Long Night Out marks a return to his roots in contemporary jazz. Among the preeminent musicians joining him in the recording studio to play on the 11-song album are the Rippington's Russ Freeman, Eric Marienthal, Candy Dulfer, Toto's Steve Lukather, Paul Jackson Jr., Fourplay's Chuck Loeb and Nathan East, Jimmy Haslip and Will Kennedy of Yellowjackets fame, Ricky Lawson, Michael Thompson, Lenny Castro, Michael Bland, Patches Stewart and a 38-piece orchestra with additional legendary artists soon to be added. Culbertson is producing the record.