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Vince Mendoza/Metropole Orkest: Olympians
by Jack Bowers
Eight-time Grammy-winning composer/arranger Vince Mendoza, born and raised in Norwalk, CT, has enjoyed great success overseas--in Europe, to be more precise--since releasing an album with Germany's WDR Big Band in 1994. The following year, Mendoza began collaborating with the Dutch Metropole Orkest and in 1998 was named its principal guest conductor. Olympians is Mendoza's third recording with the massive, string-laden Metropole. He has recorded other albums with the London and Czech Symphony Orchestras. Here in the U.S., ...
read moreVince Mendoza Metropole Orkest: Olympians
by Richard J Salvucci
Many years ago Dizzy Gillespie recorded an album called The New Continent (Limelight, 1965). Whether it was commercially successful is hard to say, but it featured an all-star cast of Los Angeles session players. The recording made a deep impression on some listeners because it was creative, dynamic, exotic and simply enjoyable. Good compositions (by Lalo Schifrin), arrangements and musicians will do that, even if the result is a bit different than mainstream jazz. Or mainstream Gillespie. ...
read moreVince Mendoza: Freedom Over Everything
by Jack Bowers
Freedom Over Everything is a rather tall order, one that New York-born composer & arranger Vince Mendoza has chosen to describe in musical termswith help from the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and a number of guest artists including, on one track, the acclaimed American tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman via a picturesque seven-movement Concerto for Orchestra." Two brief observations: first, this is charming and tasteful music, unerringly performed by the CNSO; second, it is almost entirely symphonic, more ...
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