Jazz Articles about Alex Norris

About Alex Norris

Album Review

South Florida Jazz Orchestra: Cheap Thrills: The Music Of Rick Margitza

Read "Cheap Thrills: The Music Of Rick Margitza" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 10, 2020

In 2019, the acclaimed Michigan-bred, Paris-based tenor saxophonist Rick Margitza thought he was being asked to contribute a couple of charts to the University of South Florida Jazz Orchestra's fifth recording in its fifteen-year history as a working ensemble. But when SFJO founder and leader Chuck Bergeron looked at the charts he had an even better idea, and asked Margitza to write and / or arrange everything on the album, which thus became Cheap Thrills: The Music of Rick Margitza. ...

Album Review

South Florida Jazz Orchestra: Cheap Thrills: The Music Of Rick Margitza

Read "Cheap Thrills: The Music Of Rick Margitza" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
October 8, 2020

The concept of a large, tightly-knit big band in a recording studio, on a concert or jazz club stage may just be a plug-in memory in today's environment. Fortunately there is the fifteenth anniversary recording of The South Florida Jazz Orchestra directed by bassist/bandleader Chuck Bergeron, entitled Cheap Thrills: The Music Of Rick Margitza, to remind us what a disciplined inventive big band sounds like. With the exception of George and Ira Gershwin's “Embraceable You," all the other ...

Album Review

Alex Norris Organ Quartet: Extension Deadline

Read "Extension Deadline" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 2, 2015

Extension Deadline isn't the first organ-based date that trumpeter Alex Norris put together. It is, however, the first one to see the light of day. In the liner notes for this satisfying quartet outing, Norris notes that he recorded an organ-centric record in the '90s, but that record was shelved. So it is with great satisfaction that he sees this record to its release on the BJU Records imprint. While Norris has been a fixture on the ...

Interview

Alex Norris: King Band Geek

by George Colligan
September 26, 2013

[ Editor's Note: The following interview is reprinted from George Colligan's blog, Jazztruth]When I was a young middle school trumpet player in Columbia, MD, Alex Norris was kind of a musical legend around Howard County. Not only was he arguably the best trumpeter in the state, but he could play funk electric bass, and he could also play guitar like Jimi Hendrix! We both attended Peabody Conservatory together, and Norris was highly responsible for much of my musical ...

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Album Review

Alex Norris: A New Beginning

by David A. Orthmann
September 1, 2000

Norris’ first date as a leader is indebted to the spectrum of hard bop sounds of the 50s and 60s. Within the wide parameters of this genre, the trumpeter’s compositions are showing signs of individuality, such as “Ontology,” a funk-jazz tune, which stays in the groove despite the absence of an obvious back beat. A cunning improviser who occasionally reveals the influence of Miles Davis, Norris never struggles with the instrument, and forsakes long, complicated phrases in favor of short, ...