Jazz Articles
Our daily articles are carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. You can find more articles by searching our website, see what's trending on our popular articles page or read articles ahead of their published dates on our future articles page. Read our daily album reviews.
Sign in to customize your My Articles page —or— Filter Article Results
Big Band Bow-Tie: Just for the Record
by Jack Bowers
Big Band Bow–Tie, which hails from southwestern Germany, is led by flugelhorn maestro Karl Farrent, a mainspring in that country’s SWR Big Band and BBB–T’s most accomplished soloist. As is true of almost every German band we’ve heard, Bow–Tie is in sync all the way, but the recording itself leaves much to be desired, shrouding the ensemble in a reverberant “concert hall” cocoon that tempers the sound and lessens its over–all impact. Farrent and the other soloists rise above that ...
read moreThe SWR Big Band Featuring Bob Mintzer: The Music of Duke Ellington and Bob Mintzer
by Jack Bowers
To celebrate the centenary of Duke Ellington’s birth, Germany’s SWR Big Band joined forces with American saxophonist / big band leader Bob Mintzer for a May ’99 concert performance in Stuttgart that includes half a dozen compositions by Ellington (or associates) and four others by Mintzer. While considerable resourcefulness is needed to transmute any of these timeworn Ellington–style warhorses into front–runners again, Mintzer and the SWR’s Jörg–Achim Keller, each of whom arranged three of them, manage easily to do so, ...
read moreThe SWR Big Band Featuring Max Greger: Swing-Legenden Live
by Jack Bowers
Germany’s SWR Big Band, with nearly half a century of experience under its belt, is one tight, punchy and self–confident ensemble. In this concert performance from September ’99, featuring the veteran tenor saxophonist Max Greger, the SWR belts out a series of evergreens from the Swing Era and Tin Pan Alley with a disarming blend of perception and panache. Even while traversing such familiar ground, the band does its best to enliven the landscape by throwing everything it has into ...
read more
Giveaway
Days remaining: 8
