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Jazz Articles about Andrew Gutauskas

33
Album Review

Danny Jonokuchi Big Band: A Decade

Read "A Decade" reviewed by Jack Bowers


For trumpeter, vocalist and bandleader Danny Jonokuchi, the path to success--in music and in life--has never been smooth or trouble-free. Born with a congenital lung disease, Jonokuchi needed life-saving surgery while in high school to treat a collapsed lung, which caused him to put his trumpet playing aside, at least temporarily. Years later, and almost a continent away from his native Los Angeles, Jonokuchi was viciously attacked in south Philadelphia, resulting in traumatic injuries to his mouth and embouchure. This ...

5
Album Review

Danny Jonokuchi: A Decade

Read "A Decade" reviewed by Pierre Giroux


A Decade is arranger-composer, trumpeter and vocalist Danny Jonokuchi's celebration of personal and musical evolution, encapsulating his growth over the last ten years as a musician and leader of his big band. The album draws on jazz's rich traditions while also serving as a reflection of the enduring spirit of the genre. The release features compositions that outline the signature flourish of Jonokuchi's writing, standing as a testament to his ability to overcome personal obstacles. The ...

1
Album Review

Miho Hazama M_Unit: Beyond Orbits

Read "Beyond Orbits" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi


Uno degli eventi al Monterey Jazz Festival del 2021 è stato il concerto dell'M_Unit di Miho Hazama, la giovane compositrice e bandleader giapponese che s'è imposta tra le figure più innovative della sua generazione. In quell'occasione Hazama ha presentato la suite in tre movimenti “Exoplanet" che--incisa poi in studio--costituisce il fulcro del disco appena pubblicato dalla Edition Records. Chi conosce i suoi lavori di questi anni, sa quanto la scrittura della bandleader risulti coinvolgente per l'abilità di ...

12
Album Review

Miho Hazama's M_Unit: Beyond Orbits

Read "Beyond Orbits" reviewed by Chris May


Beyond Orbits is the fêted composer and conductor Miho Hazama's fourth album with M_Unit. She founded the band in 2012, two years after moving from Tokyo to New York and while she was still studying for a masters in jazz composition at the Manhattan School of Music. Hazama released M_Unit's first album in 2013. The band's third, Dancer In Nowhere (Sunnyside, 2019), was nominated for a Grammy. Among her other achievements, Hazama was in 2019 appointed chief ...

11
Album Review

Brian McCarthy Nonet: After|Life

Read "After|Life" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Saxophonist Brian McCarthy, not one to shy away from a big theme, draws inspiration from the creation of the universe to craft After|Life Science says we are all stardust, compiled ultimately in all its complexities via gravity. Given that, he opens this expansive octet offering with “Nebula," referring to cosmic gasses consisting of hydrogen and deep space dust that--given gravity's propensities--coalesce into stars and solar systems consisting of planets with water, landforms and eventually us. Or something ...

6
Album Review

Ulysses Owens Jr. Big Band: Soul Conversations

Read "Soul Conversations" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Drummer Ulysses Owens Jr.'s Big Band comes out swinging on its debut recording, Soul Conversations, thundering through Michael Dease's incendiary arrangement of the Dizzy Gillespie/John Lewis flame-thrower, “Two Bass Hit." For more such heat, however, the listener must move forward to Track 5, John Coltrane's impulsive “Giant Steps," thence to Track 9 for Charles Turner III's earnest homage to “Harlem Harlem Harlem," on which he doubles as vocalist. That's not to say that everything in between is ...

9
Album Review

Steven Feifke Big Band: Kinetic

Read "Kinetic" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Jazz connoisseurs who lean toward big bands that swing as earnestly and often as the renowned architects of the epic big-band era should find plenty to cheer about on Kinetic, the debut recording by New York-based pianist, composer and arranger Steven Feifke's audacious and fiery ensemble. This is a band that fires on all cylinders—but it couldn't even leave the garage unless Feifke supplied the fuel. With one exception (noted below), Feifke's intense and high-powered charts neatly pave the way, ...


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