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David G White: While You Were Sleeping
by Dan McClenaghan
Guitarist David White made a splash on Origin Records with his Big Neighborhood band. Neighbors was released in 2005 on the label, followed by 11:11 in 2007. He picked up a Grammy nomination. Both albums pushed boundaries--White cites a wide range of influences: singer/songwriter James Taylor, Latin jazz, Led Zeppelin, McCoy Tyner, bebop and free jazz. Big Neighborhood was a quartet--a saxophone and a rhythm section. For While You Were Sleeping he distills things to the trio format. He ...
Continue ReadingDavid G White: While You Were Sleeping
by Paul Rauch
Guitarist David G. White has an independent streak in him that has endured from his early days on the scene in Boston and New York in the 1990s. Grounded, like most fusion-oriented players, in bebop language, White learned the nuances of jazz improvisation from his mentor Charlie Shoemake in Los Angeles. Now based in Oakland, his journey led him to Seattle and the band Big Neighborhood in the 2000s, a tenure that led to a pair of albums on the ...
Continue ReadingMike Thompson: 6th Avenue
by Jack Bowers
Composer and arranger Mike Thompson was in his mid-twenties when 6th Avenue, his debut album as leader of a big band, was recorded (in the mid-2020s) at Q Division Studios in Cambridge, Massachusetts, enlisting for the most part veteran Boston-area musicians whom Thompson had met and befriended while studying at the Berklee School of Music, from which he was graduated in 2021. Although Thompson names Bob Brookmeyer, Maria Schneider and Igor Stravinsky as role models, you would be ...
Continue ReadingRon Rieder: Dia Precioso!
by Jack Bowers
Dia Precioso! is the second album of exuberant Latin Jazz designed by Massachusetts-based composer Ron Rieder, gliding in on the heels of his well-received debut recording, Latin Jazz Sessions (2024). As before, Rieder leads a more-or-less octet comprised of topnotch Boston-area musicians; and as before, Rieder's music is for the most part arranged by percussionist Ricardo Monzon. While personnel remains roughly the same as on the earlier album, more brass (trumpeters Yaure Muniz or Greg Hopkins, trombonist ...
Continue ReadingOmar Thomas Large Ensemble: Griot Songs
by Alberto Bazzurro
Dopo una lunga gestazione, giunge a noi questo che è il terzo lavoro del Large Ensemble diretto dal compositore newyorchese Omar Thomas (incisione del maggio 2024), un doppio album ambizioso e di chiaro intento anche didascalico in cui l'orchestra appare eloquentemente come il naturale prolungamento del gesto autoriale, con risultati di notevole impatto, sette brani di ampio respiro (dai nove ai diciassette minuti) in cui la massa orchestrale tende a muoversi per lo più compatta, lungo partiture belle piene, solide, ...
Continue ReadingRon Rieder: Latin Jazz Sessions
by Jack Bowers
Even while pursuing a long and successful career in the physical sciences, Bostonian Ron Rieder never abandoned his life-long love for jazz, especially the tantalizing melodies and lively rhythms of Latin America, composing music at every opportunity before returning to writing full-time and at long last recording his debut album, Latin Jazz Sessions It was worth the wait. Rieder's colorful tunes ensnare the ears from the outset and never let go, while his septet plays Latin jazz about ...
Continue ReadingTim Ray Trio: Fire & Rain
by Jack Bowers
Boston-based pianist Tim Ray and his rhythm mates, bassist John Lockwood and drummer Mark Walker, have been performing together since 2013, and Fire & Rain is their second recording as a trio. Their years working arm-in-arm and side-by-side have spawned a symbiotic relationship, and it shows. Even when the trio tests the free-jazz waters--as it does only once, on a seat-of-the-pants salute to Chick Corea, “Improv #1 (for Chick)"--everyone is on the same page and no one ...
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