Jazz Articles about Benjamin Koppel

Benjamin Koppel: White Buses: Passage To Freedom

by Doug Collette
December 28, 2023

If saxophonist/composer/bandleader Benjamin Koppel has proven anything over the last few years, it is that he has no trouble finding sources of inspiration for his work. Whether it is just for the sake of blowing with a redoubtable rhythm section in the form of bassist Scott Colley and drummer Brian Blade on Perspective (Cowbell Music, 2023) or illustrating his own range of style with The Ultimate Soul & Jazz Revue (Cowbell Music, 2020) and The Art of The ...

Benjamin Koppel & A Clean Feed Buffet

by Maurice Hogue
December 27, 2023

This episode focuses on several excellent new releases from Clean Feed Records (Mia Dyberg, Ned Rothenberg, Nataniel Edelman, Mikko Innanen, Grzegorz Tarwid, Simon Nabatov, Phillip Greenlief & Mercury) and presents several pieces from Danish saxophonist Benjamin Koppel's White Buses Passage To Freedom. Koppel's important and stunning album is his interpretation of a World War II event in Denmark involving concentration camp prisoners who were rescued by the White Buses of the Swedish Red Cross. Koppel composed his music around survivor ...

Benjamin Koppel Plays Jazz with a Novelist's Narrative

by Lawrence Peryer
November 11, 2023

Anders Koppel: Mulberry Street Symphony

by Doug Collette
March 9, 2022

A father-son collaboration at its most sublime, Mulberry Street Symphony is a natural and logical extension of saxophonist/composer Benjamin Koppel's eclectic sets of funk and free improvisation The Ultimate Soul & Jazz Revue (Cowbell Music, 2020) and The Art of the Quartet (Cowbell Music, 2020). The prolific Dane wisely aligns himself here with redoubtable counterparts in the persons of bassist Scott Colley and drummer Brian Blade to form the core of a larger musical aggregation including the Odense Symphony Orchestra ...

Benjamin Koppel: The Ultimate Soul & Jazz Revue

by Chris M. Slawecki
April 21, 2021

Listen to music long enough, and it's almost bound to happen: You're not sure exactly what you want to listen to, but you know that whatever you listen to needs must bump and groove. The Ultimate Soul & Jazz Revue, an anthology of American jazz, soul and R&B recorded live at a Copenhagen music festival by Danish saxophonist Benjamin Koppel and his big band, is some first-rate scratch for that itch. Ultimate Soul & Jazz neatly packages Koppel's ...

Benjamin Koppel: Curiosity Won't Kill This Cat

by R.J. DeLuke
January 14, 2021

Benjamin Koppel is an extraordinary Danish musician from an illustrious music family. He is all about music—of just about any kind. He's always absorbing it, discovering what there is to derive from it. A kind of restless desire to explore envelops him. He simplifies it in his own words: he's curious. It comes naturally to him. The alto saxophonist is intelligent and unassuming. His influences are broad, but they start with his family. Koppel, a stellar player and ...

Benjamin Koppel: Room to Roam

by Doug Collette
December 6, 2020

In his two simultaneously-released double CDs, Danish saxophonist Benjamin Koppel illustrates how fine a line exists between authentic rhythm and blues and healthily-improvised jazz. It might otherwise go without saying it takes the caliber of world-class singers and players to traverse such broad and fertile territory-- bassist Scott Colley and trumpeter Randy Brecker are just two—but, credit where credit is due to both the bandleader and his colleagues, they mesh their complementary talents in such a way that the focus ...