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Brian Carpenter’s Ghost Train Orchestra: Book Of Rhapsodies Vol. II
by Jerome Wilson
There have been several ensembles in the past couple of decades that delved into the novelty jazz recordings of the Thirties and Forties. In the Netherlands there have been The Beau Hunks and the Willem Breuker Kollektief and in this country there have been Don Byron's Bug Music group and Brian Carpenter's Ghost Train Orchestra.The Ghost Train Orchestra's usual focus is on the “hot jazz" of the Twenties and Thirties but in 2013 they put out a CD ...
read moreBob Merrill: Tell Me Your Troubles – Songs by Joe Bushkin, Volume 1
by C. Michael Bailey
There are several arcs of history and experience intersecting on Bob Merrill's Tell Me Your Troubles--Songs by Joe Bushkin, Volume 1. The first is that of Joe Bushkin (1961--2004). Bushkin was a swing era pianist and composer best known for his association with trumpeter Bunny Berigan's band, guitarist Eddie Condon, Max Kaminsky, Joe Marsala, and Muggsy Spanier before World War II and Louis Armstrong, Bud Freeman, and Benny Goodman after the war. His style of composing, as evidenced on his ...
read moreBob Merrill: Cheerin’ Up the Universe
by C. Michael Bailey
Jazz as an art form is not noted for a particularly sunny disposition. Trumpeter and vocalist Bob Merrill dispenses with this prejudice in his opening original title composition of Cheerin' Up the Universe, his fourth recording. From the outset, this recital is going to be a positive, affirming musical experience sans the saccharine sentimentality projects like this often can fall into. The musicianship and imagination here are much too sharp to allow that to happen. The New ...
read moreBrian Carpenter’s Ghost Train Orchestra: Book Of Rhapsodies
by Mark Corroto
If you were to identify the music from Book Of Rhapsodies as cartoon music and asked to name specifically which cartoons, it might be easy to guess your age. The baby-boom generations would call bandleader Brian Carpenter's music the soundtrack to Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam and might guess Carl Stalling. X-Generation would identify the soundtrack to the show Ren & Stimpy. Older folk would know Stalling adapted much of his music from originator Raymond Scott. But then, we would ...
read moreAgachiko: Agachiko: Yes!
by C. Michael Bailey
Agachiko is a band led by Boston-based vocalist Gabrielle Agachiko, bringing together an impressive array of musicians that includes saxophonist Russ Gershon of the Either/Orchestra, and Ken Field of the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble, both distilling their amply-endowed playing down to a bare essence where all that remains is the music to support an exceptional voice and vision. Largely an acoustic ensemble, Agachiko has a malleable ability to accomplish a variety of performance ends, sounding minimal and elegant, bluesy and brazen, ...
read moreBrian Carpenter’s Ghost Train Orchestra: Hothouse Stomp
by C. Michael Bailey
One of the beauties of long-lived music genres is if a current one becomes boring and the future looks, well, too futuristic, we can always go backwards, investigating earlier forms we may have not paid attention to earlier. And herein lies the value of Brian Carpenter's Hothouse Stomp: The Music of 1920 Chicago and Harlem. The music Carpenter concentrates on is big band music other than Duke Ellington and Count Basie, during the Jazz Age of F. Scott Fitzgerald and ...
read moreEither/Orchestra: Mood Music for Time Travelers
by Ian Patterson
As saxophonist/founder Russ Gershon has noted, the 25-year history of the Either/Orchestra constitutes a quarter of jazz's eventful history. The changes in this large ensemble's music in part reflect wider trends and at the same time are the results of an organic evolution as members have come and gone. In the early years, Gershon plumbed the jazz cannon for repertory in addition to composing original material. However, arrangements of songs by Bob Dylan, Bing Crosby and Robert Fripp pointed to ...
read moreGreg Burk: Unduality
by Raul d'Gama Rose
Unduality, a duet between pianist Greg Burk and Dominican-born conguero Vicente Lebron, is quite simply the most innovative interpretation of Johann Sebastian Bach's “Invention #1" since conceived by the master. It could be one of the most striking re-imaginings of a previously composed piece, ever. In themselves, the Bach's Inventions are superlative creations demonstrating contrapuntal technique, while at the same time exploring a wide range of expressions using various styles in several keys and developing the motives in a brilliantly ...
read moreDarrell Katz and the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra: A Wallflower In The Amazon
by Bruce Lindsay
The Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra has been part of the Boston music scene since 1985, and A Wallflower In The Amazon is the eighth album in the group's history. Darrell Katz, the Orchestra's Director, has been involved since the beginning: his arrangements on this album draw on this experience to showcase the individual talents of the Orchestra's members, while also drawing them together in some complex but accessible ensemble passages. Rebecca Shrimpton delivers a beautiful vocal performance ...
read moreEither/Orchestra: Mood Music for Time Travellers
by Jerry D'Souza
The past 25 years have been a time of transition for The Either/Orchestra. Members have come and gone and come back again. Their music has imbibed several styles and genres and grown all the richer. One of the sagest moves they made was the long, and fruitful, collaboration with Ethiopian music and with musicians that included Mahmoud Ahmed, Getachew Mekurya and Mulatu Astatke,For this recording, Russ Gershon wrote a couple of tunes geared to the organ after he ...
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