Results for "Gene Roland"

Gene Roland

Born: September 15, 1921

Tobias Hoffmann Jazz Orchestra: Conspiracy

by Jack Bowers
October 29, 2022

While listening to Conspiracy, German-born composer-arranger Tobias Hoffmann's second album, the thought arose that “Stan Kenton would have loved this." Like Kenton, Hoffmann is an explorer who approaches music from a cerebral point of view but never overlooks the need to swing and to keep an audience engaged by varying the tone, tempo and color of ...

UNT One O'Clock Lab Band: Lab 2021

by Jack Bowers
June 23, 2022

The University of North Texas' flagship ensemble, the One O'Clock Lab Band, has been producing annual recordings for almost half a century. It has also given rise to a veritable assembly line of world-class jazz musicians, more of whom are no doubt coming of age while honing their chops on the One O'Clock's latest album, Lab ...

Stan Kenton and His Orchestra: Concert on the Pacific

by Jack Bowers
August 14, 2021

The Stan Kenton Orchestra's Concert on the Pacific is actually a compendium of several concerts recorded between January and March 1958 at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, California—a series that almost emptied Kenton's wallet and caused him to pause and regroup a year or so later. While this was post-Rosolino/Sims/Konitz/Levey, the Kenton Orchestra was never without ...

Stan Kenton and His Orchestra: In a Lighter Vein

by Jack Bowers
December 13, 2020

Stan Kenton was a man of many moods, as was his intrepid and popular orchestra, which endured until his passing in August 1979 and whose renown is kept alive even today by the Stan Kenton Legacy Orchestra. Kenton dons his carefree hat on In a Lighter Vein, an assortment of straight-ahead themes from the orchestra's jazz ...

Stan Kenton: A Kenton Trilogy, Part 2 / The Sound of Jazz

by Jack Bowers
January 13, 2020

The Sound of Jazz by the legendary Stan Kenton Orchestra follows Part 1 of a Kenton Trilogy, Dance Time, and hopefully precedes a third component yet to be named. Although Kenton has been gone for more than forty years (he died in August 1979), he has hardly been forgotten, with reissues of concert and studio sessions ...

Stan Kenton and His Orchestra: Jazz Journey

by Jack Bowers
November 5, 2018

For those who thought that reissues of albums by the Stan Kenton Orchestra had faded away as the well ran dry, think again: from Sounds of Yesteryear comes a welcome and invigorating Jazz Journey, traversing half a dozen concerts by the superb Kenton Orchestra that consist for the most part of unissued material from the years ...

Los Angeles Jazz Institute Festival - Woodchopper's Ball: Part 1-4

by Simon Pilbrow
September 22, 2018

Los Angeles Jazz Institute Festival “Woodchoppers' Ball" Four Points by Sheraton at LAX Los Angeles, CA May 23-27, 2018 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 The Los Angeles Jazz Institute (LAJI), under Ken Poston, has continued for some thirty years to ...

Stan Kenton Orchestra: Mellophonium Memoirs

by Jack Bowers
December 8, 2017

Among bandleader Stan Kenton's many ensembles, surely none has given rise to as many differences of opinion--pro and con--as the Mellophonium Orchestra of the early 1960s. Audiences generally loved the warm and inviting sound of the mellophonium, residing in a nether region between trumpet and trombone; musicians, on the other hand--both those who played the mellophonium ...

Dick Meldonian and Sonny Igoe

June 26, 2017

Saxophonist Dick Meldonian began his recording career in Charlie Barnet's band in 1950. He then moved on to Stan Kenton at the start of 1952. He remained with Kenton until the mid-1950s, when he left to record on 12-inch LPs with Pat Moran, Sam Most, Erroll Garner, Nat Pierce, Bill Russo, Marion Evans (he's on the ...