Jazz Articles about Alan Ferber

About Alan Ferber

Album Review

Mike Holober: This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters

Read "This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
October 1, 2024

We live on a rock. A few billion years of the workings of the complexities of carbon chemistry put us here. The systems and intricacies of every element that has unfolded to maintain us should be respected and preserved. Mike Holober's This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters, featuring Holober and his Gotham Jazz Orchestra, digs into this theme in a sprawling, two-disc big band jazz outing. Like life itself, and the resulting ecosystems, this multi-movement suite--an effort that is the ...

Album Review

Tracy Yang: OR

by Jack Kenny
September 30, 2024

Darcy James Argue and Maria Schneider have produced music in recent years that is setting new parameters. They have broadened the scope of jazz by mining inspiration from unlikely sources: Argue finds inspiration in politics and conspiracy theories; Schneider looked at the data world, both artists revivifying the large jazz orchestra. A new name can be added: Tracy Yang. Yang has her own preoccupations: music, photography and ecology. Yang's story has many intriguing aspects. To abandon a career ...

Album Review

Miguel Zenon: Golden City

Read "Golden City" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
September 22, 2024

The alto saxophone rose to jazz prominence in the 1940s, under the influence of Charlie Parker and the birth of bebop. Important players such as Art Pepper, Lee Konitz and Ornette Coleman took the horn in their own directions, crafting distinctive alto saxophone voices. Moving ahead to the new millennium, no alto saxophonist has entered the tradition with more style and panache than Miguel Zenon. His Alma Aldentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook (Marsalis Music, 2011), Tipico (Miel Music, 2017) and ...

Album Review

Jihye Lee Orchestra: Infinite Connections

Read "Infinite Connections" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
August 19, 2024

Su queste pagine abbiamo seguito il percorso discografico di Jihye Lee a partire dal suo esordio (April, 2017) ed il successivo Daring Mind (Motéma 2021), co-prodotto con Darcy James Argue. La collaborazione con quest'ultimo si ripropone anche nel nuovo Infinite Connections, registrato nell'ottobre 2023, che evidenzia un significativo passo avanti nella sua sintesi tra jazz e proprie radici musicali. Che la bandleader fosse un talento eccezionale è apparso chiaro dalla rapidità con cui ha padroneggiato le tecniche ...

Album Review

Jihye Lee Orchestra: Infinite Connections

Read "Infinite Connections" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
July 22, 2024

One of the most ambitious composers working exclusively in the large-ensemble format, Jihye Lee is now offering her third release, coming on the heels of the well-received April (Self-released, 2017) and Daring Mind (Motéma Music, 2021). Lee is a fearless artist with a seemingly limitless imagination, with a multiplicity of themes and rhythms swirling through her complex, densely-layered compositions. And as always, she once again has a terrific group of colleagues to help bring her rich, multi-hued vision to life. ...

Album Review

Jon Gordon: 7th Ave South

Read "7th Ave South" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
June 7, 2024

Jon Gordon, an alto and soprano saxophonist, steps into the limelight with his latest release 7th Ave South, a melodic memoir of a transformative place for jazz history in the early 1980s. This journey is a testament to the fascination of discovery and the allure of artistic camaraderie four decades later. In this ten-track outing of primarily original compositions (with two exceptions), Gordon, a music professor at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, is accompanied by fellow faculty members or ...

Album Review

Alan Ferber: Up High, Down Low

Read "Up High, Down Low" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
June 3, 2024

Nel nono disco da bandleader, il trombonista Alan Ferber ritorna col suo abituale nonet, con cui ha già inciso quattro album. L'organico ha subìto qualche cambiamento con le presenze del chitarrista Nir Felder, di Chris Cheek al sax baritono e qualche altro (ma restano i fidi sassofonisti Jon Gordon, Charles Pillow e John Ellis, il trombettista Scott Wendholt) confermando l'estetica di fondo: un modern mainstream caratterizzato da groove ritmico, chiarezza melodica e arrangiamenti leggibili che s'ispirano anche al soul ...