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Pete McGuinness: Mixed Bag
by Pierre Giroux
With Mixed Bag, Pete McGuinness once again affirms his place among the elite of modern big band composers and arrangers, presenting a luminous tapestry of jazz idioms that ranges from the exuberantly traditional to the adventurously modern. As the title suggests, the album is a delightful potpourri. However, rather than feeling scattered or unfocused, McGuinness weaves his eclectic inclinations into a coherent and emotionally engaging statement. He brings to bear not only the encyclopedic command of a seasoned jazz craftsman ...
Continue ReadingThe Pete McGuinness Jazz Orchestra: Mixed Bag
by Jack Bowers
Award-winning arranger Pete McGuinness has chosen to name the fourth recording by his stellar New York-based Jazz Orchestra Mixed Bag, a term whose meaning may be construed as positive or less so, depending on the context. As he explains in the album's liner notes, McGuinness accentuates the positive, writing that to him, “Variety has always been the spice of life. I don't like the feeling of being pigeon-holed into a certain bag...For this project...I've included many 'bags' that I love ...
Continue ReadingJoe Fiedler Trio 2.0: Dragon Suite
by Glenn Astarita
Joe Fiedler steers this trio with the gusto of a trombone maestro who has gigged everywhere from Sesame Street's cheery lanes to prolific stints in the modern and free jazz realms. Guitarist Pete McCann and drummer join him Michael Sarin for a duo with pedigrees juicier than a medieval feast. McCann's strings have sung for heavyweights like Lee Konitz and Maria Schneider, his fingers weaving through jazz's tapestry with a knack for both finesse and fire. Sarin is a rhythm ...
Continue ReadingBen Kono Group: Voyages
by Jerome Wilson
This album is saxophonist Ben Kono's tribute to his family's history, dating back to his grandfather's migration from Japan to the United States in 1911, performed by a combination of small jazz group and string quartet, The first half of the work concerns with his family's transition into life in the United States, and the second half celebrates four generations of Kono's lineage, going from his grandparents all the way through to his own children. The strings are ...
Continue ReadingChristopher Zuar Orchestra: Exuberance
by Angelo Leonardi
È decisamente un periodo d'oro per l'orchestrazione jazz. Ai molti bandleader e arrangiatori emersi nel nuovo millennio, si aggiunge decisamente Christopher Zuar, che firma il secondo album confermando le doti espresse in Musings (Sunnyside), il debutto di otto anni fa. Con un diploma al New England Conservatory e un master alla Manhattan School of Music, Zuar aggiunge una spiccata fantasia nell'arricchire il modern mainstream orchestrale di nuove suggestioni. Questo progetto è stato concepito tra il 2017 e ...
Continue ReadingChristopher Zuar Orchestra: Exuberance
by Jack Bowers
Composer/arranger Christopher Zuar's second album, Exuberance, recounts in musical terms a twisting yet picturesque journey that began seven years earlier, in 2017, when Zuar first met his now-wife, the animator Anne Beal, at MacDowell, the famed artists' residency in New Hampshire. While the relationship “blooms" in winter, there are “moments between" and other inescapable detours until “certainty" erases any lingering doubts, “exuberance" carries the day and Zuar and Beal are united as one. Yes, the music is ...
Continue ReadingChristopher Zuar Orchestra: Exuberance
by Katchie Cartwright
Exuberance is part of a “long-form tonal conversation" between composer Christopher Zuar and animator Anne Beal. Zuar, a Long Island New Yorker, describes the work as “a journey of personal growth," which began in 2017 when he and Beal met as fellows at the MacDowell Colony in the woods of New Hampshire. He explains that the album is a “collaborative project that charts the last seven years of our lives." “In Winter Blooms," the opening track, grew out ...
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