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Jazz Articles about Alex Iles

19
Album Review

Judy Whitmore: Let's Fall in Love

Read "Let's Fall in Love" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Polymath Judy Whitmore has taken time away from her busy and productive career(s) to record her fifth album, Let's Fall in Love, and like the first four, it is a smooth and delightful tour of memorable themes from the Great American Songbook, sung with radiance and heart by one of the leading exponents of popular song on today's scene. Whitmore does not sing jazz (no scatting or improvising here); she leaves that in the capable hands of ...

13
Album Review

Brian Eisenberg Jazz Orchestra: Pain & Beauty

Read "Pain & Beauty" reviewed by Edward Blanco


A religious man at heart, composer/band leader and producer Brian Eisenberg leads an 18-piece big band (The Brian Eisenberg Jazz Orchestra) on a personal musical exploration on the meaning of love through the perspective of what may be beautiful, and what may seem hurtful on the very introspective and challenging Pain & Beauty. The album, as he writes, “is dedicated to that ideal of genuine love...painful yet, beautiful love." Eisenberg sets the musical bar quite high on such lofty and ...

6
Album Review

Dave Slonaker: Convergency

Read "Convergency" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci


In December 1910, Virginia Woolf once observed, human character changed and, along with it, so did everything else. Politics, society, religion, sex, all of it, she thought, would leave the ancien regime behind. And, to a point, she was correct. Within a few years, the old world was gone, swept away by war and revolution. It was not coming back. Ever. Somehow, listening to the marvelous musical products of modern big bands, Woolf seems oddly relevant. The level ...

45
Album Review

Dave Slonaker Big Band: Convergency

Read "Convergency" reviewed by Jack Bowers


While big-band albums generally differ, sometimes widely, in tone and temperament, there are definitive criteria by which every one may be evaluated--arrangements, performers, sound quality, sequencing and, above all, the elusive but imperative swing quotient. Dave Slonaker checks all those boxes and more on Convergency, a superlative successor to his excellent Grammy-nominated debut album, Intrada, released in 2013. To begin with, Slonaker, best known as a film and television composer, is an excellent big-band writer and arranger, ...

9
Album Review

Dave Slonaker Big Band: Convergency

Read "Convergency" reviewed by Troy Dostert


Composer/conductor Dave Slonaker probably won't qualify as “prolific," at least based on recorded output alone, as he spends a lot of his time behind the scenes in film and television work—but one must appreciate the level of craftsmanship that he brings to his big band projects. His debut release, Intrada (Origin Records, 2014), received a well-earned Grammy nomination, and his sophomore effort is no less accomplished, with the well-designed compositions and outstanding ensemble work that justify all the attention it ...

5
Album Review

Frank Macchia & Brock Avery: Rhythm Abstraction: Azure

Read "Rhythm Abstraction: Azure" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Reedman-arranger-composer Frank Macchia didn't take the conventional route in putting his EP Rhythm Abstractions: Azure together. He didn't get a huge orchestra in one studio, pass out the charts and explain to the players what he was trying to do. What he did was pare the personnel down to a minimum and turn drummer Brock Avery loose for some serious improvisation time. Then Machia layered in a whole bunch of reeds—piccolo, flutes (alto,bass, contrabass), clarinets (alto, bass contrabass), saxophones (sopranino, ...

6
Album Review

Doc Stewart Big Band Resuscitation: Code Blue!

Read "Code Blue!" reviewed by Jack Bowers


"Doc" is much more than a nickname to Chris Stewart: it's a profession. And straight-ahead jazz is far more than a pastime: it's a passion. For the past sixteen years, Doc Stewart's day gig has been ER physician at the Mayo Clinic Hospital in Scottsdale, AZ. Long before that, however, Stewart was a working musician who played alto sax with a number of big bands including those led by Tom Kubis, Ladd McIntosh, Matt Catingub, Louie Bellson, Toshiko Akiyoshi / ...


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