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Stockholm Jazz Orchestra
Stockholm Jazz Orchestra: Stockholm Jazz Orchestra plays Stockholm Jazz Orchestra
by Chris Mosey
The Stockholm Jazz Orchestra is a world class outfit. Led by veteran trumpet player Fredrik Noren and featuring arrangements by Chicago pianist Jim McNeely, its members come from all over Sweden and beyond in a fascinating meeting of generations. Consider, if you will, the trumpet section where grey-haired, moustachioed Gustavo Bergalli, born 1940 in Buenos Aires (ex-Michel Legrand and Gato Barbieri), sits alongside Karl Olandersson, born 1978, who with his pin-up boy looks and occasional vocals, reminds you of a ...
read moreStockholm Jazz Orchestra: Sailing
by Jack Bowers
This is the second volume by the Stockholm Jazz Orchestra of compositions and arrangements by its talented pianist, Göran Strandberg, following 2000's Lakes (Dragon). As on that earlier album, much of the music is Strandberg's, with half a dozen of his original works complementing inventive arrangements of Harold Arlen's Come Rain or Come Shine, Jerome Kern's Yesterdays, Johnny Mandel's The Shadow of Your Smile and Carla Bley's Flags.
Strandberg's fertile imagination is conspicuous at the outset with an elliptical approach ...
read moreThe Stockholm Jazz Orchestra: Tango
by Jack Bowers
Stockholm isn’t as far from Buenos Aires as one might have assumed. Faced with the daunting task of adapting Argentina’s most popular dance music to a big–band framework, the Swedes who comprise the Stockholm Jazz Orchestra perform like native–born South Americans in a persuasive session that would no doubt have brought a smile to the lips of the late great tango master Astor Piazzolla. The SJO is staunchly supported in its endeavor by three Argentinians — conductor / arranger Carlos ...
read moreThe Stockholm Jazz Orchestra & Jim McNeely: Sound Bites
by Jack Bowers
As a partisan of straight–ahead big–band Jazz, I approach cautiously any album encompassing Jim McNeely’s music, as I can never be sure before listening which of the two McNeelys may show up, the laid–back moderate or the wild–eyed extremist. Happily, Sound Bites, recorded with the Stockholm Jazz Orchestra in ’95 and featuring on four tracks McNeely’s amply endowed teammate in the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, saxophonist Dick Oatts, is about as plainspoken and swinging as a big–band date can be. McNeely’s ...
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