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 Coming Soon page. Read our daily album reviews.

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Album Review

The Brian Pastor Big Band: Common Men

Read "Common Men" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
April 6, 2007

One sampling of trombonist Brian Pastor's Common Men will be enough to convince you that there's nothing common about the music you've just heard or the musicians that played it. It's an especially pleasurable big band outing and debut for The Brian Pastor Big Band, a nineteen-piece Philadelphia-based ensemble delivering one swinging performance.

The album includes a mixture of standards and originals from members of the band. Pastor contributes two new charts, beginning with the lively “T.S.C. Blues Or A ...

383

Album Review

The Brian Pastor Big Band: Common Men

Read "Common Men" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
July 15, 2006

Yes, I'll admit I'm growing old (the senior discount is now a given), but never too old, I hope, to appreciate a big band that's clearly bursting with energy and enthusiasm and swings like every note may be its last. By the way, that's a thumbnail sketch of trombonist Brian Pastor's Philadelphia-based ensemble and Common Men, a dynamic and unequivocally dazzling debut that has left me grinning from ear to ear.

Any session that opens with a pulse-quickening arrangement of ...