Jazz Articles

Rodger Fox Big Band Featuring King Kapisi: The Brotherman Project

by Jack Bowers
March 6, 2024

If nothing--no matter how peculiar or aberrant--is undertaken without a reason, trombonist Rodger Fox, whose big band is the finest New Zealand has to offer, must have had his reasons for recording the band's newest album with the country's leading hip-hop artist, King Kapisi. As jazz, like hip-hop, is an acquired taste, it is fruitless for someone who admires and appreciates one to impugn the other. It is what it is. And so we have King Kapisi ...

The Rodger Fox Big Band: Reimagined! The Roger Fox big Band Plays Sir Dave Dobbyn

by Jack Bowers
June 15, 2022

On Reimagined!, New Zealander Rodger Fox's superlative big band takes a fresh look at the music of Sir Dave Dobbyn, one of that country's most honored and beloved musicians. Although Dobbyn has spent his celebrated career in the fields of pop and rock, his evocative compositions lend themselves well to light and swinging interpretations by Fox's seventeen-member ensemble and more than half a dozen well-known guest artists from the U.S. Even so, there is enough heavy backbeat ...

Erna Ferry: Wild About You

by Jack Bowers
August 2, 2016

If singer Erna Ferry's name is new to you, that's more than likely because she's a New Zealander who makes her home in that lovely faraway island nation in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, east of Australia across the Tasman Sea. Ferry, a jazz singer with bluesy overtones, is backed on Wild About You by the exemplary Rodger Fox Big Band, the very best that New Zealand has to offer. The band, in fact, is so formidable that one could be ...

Chris Cain: King of the Blues

by Jack Bowers
July 27, 2016

Presumably, the title of singer / guitarist Chris Cain's new CD, King of the Blues, refers not to Cain himself but to one of his idols, the legendary bluesman B.B. King, who passed away in May 2015. Cain, who was born and raised in San Jose, CA, attended his first B.B. King concert at age three, and among the album's nine tracks are a pair written by King, “Whole Lotta Lovin'" and “So Excited." Cain composed four others to complement ...

Rodger Fox and Brian Smith: The LA-NZ Connection

by Jack Bowers
December 31, 2005

Jazz truly is a universal language, a premise that is proven again on this spirited post bop studio date by two of New Zealand's most celebrated musicians, trombonist Rodger Fox and saxophonist Brian Smith, backed by a blue-chip West Coast rhythm section--pianist Bill Cunliffe, guitarist Larry Koonse, bassist Tom Warrington, and drummer Joe La Barbera (with Erna Ferry, another charismatic New Zealander, adding seductive vocals on two tracks).

Fox, who leads New Zealand's foremost big band, and Smith, who honed ...

Bill Cunliffe with the Rodger Fox Big Band: Warriors

by Jack Bowers
October 1, 2002

Having known of Bill Cunliffe only as an outstanding Jazz pianist, I was thrilled to learn via receipt of trombonist Rodger Fox's latest album that he's an outstanding big--band composer / arranger as well. Six of the compositions and all of the charts on Warriors are Cunliffe's, and there's not a blank cartridge in the canister. Cunliffe and Fox met when Bill traveled to New Zealand in '96 to perform with his trio and a quartet led by Fox, that ...

The Rodger Fox Big Band: Ain't That the Truth

by Jack Bowers
December 1, 2000

This is the fourteenth recording by one of the best big bands you’ve probably never heard, trombonist Rodger Fox’s world–class ensemble from far–away New Zealand. As on several of those earlier albums, which featured guest appearances by such well–known Jazz artists as John Scofield, Tom Harrell, Gary Grant, Bobby Shew and Bill Reichenbach, Fox employs a “secret weapon” on Ain’t That the Truth in the person of spectacular lead trumpeter Jon Papenbrook from Los Angeles who galvanizes the secton on ...

The Dukes of Jazzard: Half-Gallon Nut

by Rob Evanoff
August 1, 2000

Is the Half-Gallon glass half full or half empty? Or is it half and half? I would hazard to guess that the glass is bottomless. It would have to be to contain all ingredients thatThe Dukes of Jazzardpour in. Recorded live in November ’99 at the famousBoiler Roomin New Orleans, The Dukes of Jazzard dump a whole pot full of musical goodies into the cauldron to make a Half-Gallon Nut. Blending soul, heavy funk, jazz, rock, hip hop into a ...

The Rodger Fox Big Band: Xtra Juicy

by Jack Bowers
February 1, 1999

Trombonist/bandleader Rodger Fox, until recently one of New Zealand’s best–kept secrets, has for many years helped keep the flame of Jazz burning brightly in that faraway land Down Under. Fox’s impressive 19–piece ensemble surfaced in 1997 at the annual Conference of the International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE) in Chicago, performed that same year in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and made a well–received second appearance in January at the IAJE Conference in Anaheim, California. The ensemble gets right down ...

Rodger Fox: Back to Being One

by Jack Bowers
February 1, 1999

Here’s a consistently colorful, invariably swinging and completely captivating quartet date led by one of the finest trombonists you’ve probably never heard. Rodger Fox, best known as the foreman of New Zealand’s most prominent big band (track eight on this disc, “Xtra Juicy,” is also the name of the ensemble’s newest release), displays the brash awareness and awesome chops that are the hallmark of such celebrated ’bonemeisters as Carl Fontana, Frank Rosolino, Jimmy Knepper, Slide Hampton, Urbie Green, Phil Wilson ...