Jazz Articles about Alexa Tarantino

About Alexa Tarantino

Radio & Podcasts

Alexa Tarantino shines with her second album

by Bob Osborne
June 25, 2020

More great new music from across the World of Jazz with six great new albums to share. The second album from Alexa Tarantino on Posi-tone finds her continuing to demonstrate her skills and artistry. Exciting music from Buenos Aires from the collective known as Aves. The debut album from Chris Platt and Angela Turone brings a modern feel to the sounds of Brazil. Event Horizon Jazz Quartet performs a multifarious selection of original music composed by Jim Kaczmarek ...

Interview

Alexa Tarantino: Passion For Playing And Teaching

by R.J. DeLuke
June 9, 2020

Alexa Tarantino was bitten by the jazz bug at a young age. She was fortunate to grow up in a community where jazz is an important part of the musical fabric—rare these days. She swiftly grabbed hold of the music and has developed into an in-demand alto saxophonist, earning a series of high-profile gigs that slowed down a bit only recently because she is pushing forward with her own band and musical vision. Her career includes playing sax ...

Album Review

Alexa Tarantino: Clarity

by Paul Rauch
June 8, 2020

Saxophonist Alexa Tarantino has as impressive resume in jazz as any artist could hope for at this stage of a career. As a performer, she has contributed notably to The DIVA Jazz Orchestra, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, the Cecile McLorin Salvant Quintet and Arturo O'Farrill & The Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, to note a few. She has lived the jazz life, juggling responsibilities as an educator, musician and curator, somehow fitting all the pieces together that illustrate the intricacies ...

Album Review

Alexa Tarantino: Clarity

by Dan Bilawsky
June 7, 2020

Alto saxophonist Alexa Tarantino is an indefatigable spirit, plain and simple. In the past two years alone she's worked with everybody from trumpeter Wynton Marsalis to vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant, held down the lead alto chair in The DIVA Jazz Orchestra, co-led the fiery LSAT quintet with baritone saxophonist Lauren Sevian, directed her self-founded Rockport Jazz Workshop, and appeared on more than a half dozen albums, including three collective-minded gatherings on the Posi-Tone imprint and her own debut for the ...

Album Review

The DIVA Jazz Orchestra: DIVA + The Boys

Read "DIVA + The Boys" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
February 18, 2020

The all-female DIVA Jazz Orchesta has a boy-meets-girls story threaded into its origin, as drummer Stanley Kay served as the impetus behind the group's formation. Therefore, it's only fitting that the ladies have a few gentleman over to join them for some high times in the music every now and then. This eight-song set, recorded live at Pittsburgh's Manchester Craftsmen's Guild in March of 2017, finds clarinetist Ken Peplowski, dearly departed trumpeter Claudio Roditi, trombonist Jay Ashby, and ...

Album Review

The DIVA Jazz Orchestra: DIVA + the Boys

Read "DIVA + the Boys" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
February 11, 2020

After more than twenty-five years as one of the world's most renowned big bands, drummer Sherrie Maricle's superlative all-female DIVA Jazz Orchestra invited a quartet of “the boys" onboard to help ensure the ensemble's twelfth album's success. Even though DIVA needs no consorts to affirm its unremitting mastery, it is nonetheless pleasurable to witness these talented women sharing the stage and blowing up a storm with such esteemed guest artists as clarinetist Ken Peplowski, trombonist Jay Ashby and (it hurts ...

Album Review

Alexa Tarantino: Winds of Change

Read "Winds of Change" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
August 8, 2019

Coming at her music with an impressive embrace of style and tradition, and blending a natural youthful inquisitiveness and confidence to make the music her own, saxophonist-flautist and full-of-flair composer Alexa Tarantino--along with pianist Christian Sands, bassist Joe Martin, drummer Rudy Royston and trombonist Nick Finzer--makes big strides towards the limelight on her Posi-Tone Records debut as leader with the restorative and percolating Winds of Change. Over the last couple of years, Tarantino has been the much-talked-about spotlight ...