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The Princeton University Monk / Mingus Ensemble: Sounds from the Free-Thinking
by Jack Bowers
Don’t let the title of this release from Princeton University (or the impressionistic cover art) throw you off–balance or dissuade you from listening. Monk and Mingus were free–thinkers, there’s no doubt of that; but they weren’t so free that they abandoned the basic building blocks of Jazz or any other music — melody, harmony, rhythm, counterpoint and so on — and neither has the Monk/Mingus Ensemble under Tony Branker. Much of the music on Sounds from the Free–Thinking is as ...
read moreThe Princeton University Concert Jazz Ensemble, Glee Club and Gospel Ensemble: The Sacred Concert Music of Duke Ellington
by Jack Bowers
This is an absorbing entry in the “Duke Ellington Centennial Sweepstakes,” ably performed in concert by the Princeton University Concert Jazz Ensemble and a cast of thousands (actually, the Glee Club and Gospel Ensemble) conducted by Anthony Branker. The music is excerpted from Ellington’s three Concerts of Sacred Music, which premiered in 1965, ’68 and ’73 (the last only a year before his death in May 1974). For music that is focused primarily on the spiritual, there’s a conspicuous measure ...
read morePrinceton University Concert Jazz Ensembles: Mean What You Say
by Jack Bowers
Here are three editions of Princeton University’s award–winning Concert Jazz Ensemble, recorded in 1990, ’91 and ’95, in an engaging program of compositions by a number of Jazz’s elder statesmen (Dizzy Gillespie, Thad Jones, Frank Foster, Billy Strayhorn, Miles Davis/Victor Feldman, Duke Ellington, Jimmy Heath) and three relative newcomers (Gary Lindsay, Bob Meyer, Michael Philip Mossman). Perhaps surprisingly, the novices more than hold their own in such venerated company, with Lindsay’s syncopated “Studio C,” Mossman’s boppish “O.T.B.” and Meyer’s shuffling ...
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