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Metropolitan Jazz Octet: The Bowie Project
by Paul Reynolds
A tribute to a pop artist by jazz musicians--as with the new David Bowie album by Chicago's Metropolitan Jazz Octet--has to tread a careful line. It obviously won't--can't--be a rote reproduction of the originals, a flaw that sinks many pop-to-pop tributes. Yet it needs to translate the songs into jazz--its harmonic sophistication, especially--in a way that retains the essence of the artist being celebrated. The MJO effort deftly rises to that challenge. This 11-song project should intrigue Bowieists ...
read moreMetropolitan Jazz Octet featuring Paul Marinaro: The Bowie Project
by Neil Tesser
In the words of David Bowie: “Changes." The Metropolitan Jazz Octet's two previous albums teem with unadulterated jazz. Paul Marinaro is a hard-swinging, expressive baritone steeped in the Great American Songbook and the jazz tradition. So what in the galaxy are they doing with the music of pop legend--and onetime glam rocker, dancehall king, visual visionary, music man of multiple personae, and cultural icon--David Bowie? Historians might note that Bowie started playing jazz saxophone in his ...
read morePaul Marinaro: Not Quite Yet
by Pierre Giroux
Singer Paul Marinaro issued his acclaimed debut album Without A Song (122 Myrtle Records) in 2013. Seven years after the release of his follow-up, “One Night In Chicago" (122 Myrtle Records), and with almost a decade of performing from coast to coast at top-end clubs, including New York's Birdland, he has released Not Quite Yet, which is devoted to exploring timeless themes, such as life, love and the search for lasting connections. Accompanying Marinaro are longtime band members guitarist Mike ...
read morePaul Marinaro: Not Quite Yet
by Richard J Salvucci
The cover of the album is vaguely noir, with the urban greenish cast of tungsten film. A sole figure leans slightly against a building, downcast, staring into his soul, and waiting out a lit cigarette when it was still hip to smoke. The guy is Frank Sinatra and the album was In The Wee Small Hours. The year is 1955. It is difficult to believe that jny: Chicago-based vocalist Paul Marinaro has even been born, but clearly, Sinatra will make ...
read morePaul Marinaro: Without A Song
by Edward Blanco
There are tribute albums and then, there are musical homages that have far more personal meaning for an artist then dedications to other musicians. Such is the case for Chicago-based singer Paul Marinaro whose debut album Without A Song is a heartfelt tip of the hat to his 85-year old father Joseph, whose unfulfilled dreams of becoming a professional singer, inspired the making of this recording. Growing up in Buffalo, NY, the young Marinaro was surrounded by music at home ...
read morePaul Marinaro: Without A Song
by C. Michael Bailey
At first blush, Chicago singer Paul Marinaro's debut recording, Without A Song, is a well-meaning vanity recording that turns out to be...well, well-meaning. That impression is forgivable only for those not living in the Chicago area. Further reading reveals that this recording had its genesis in some 78 rpm acetates Marinaro found of his father singing the Frank Sinatra hits of the day, that “day" being 1947. What Without A Song is, is an exquisitely programmed 21st century love letter ...
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