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Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra: Voices: A Musical Heritage
by Jack Bowers
No matter where in the world one looks, there is musical history worth exploring and celebrating--which is what the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra sets out to affirm on its sixth album, Voices: A Musical Heritage. Winnipeg is the capital of Canada's Manitoba Province, and Voices pays tribute to the area's rich and expansive musical fabric via a series of eight compositions designed to exemplify some of Manitoba's far-flung heritage: First Nations, Metis, Ukrainian, Jewish, Chilean, Brazilian, Nigerian and Icelandic.
Continue ReadingWinnipeg Jazz Orchestra: Twisting Ways
by Jack Bowers
For the better part of its latest recording, Twisting Ways, Canada's Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra may as well scrub the word “Jazz" from its name, as the music mostly bears scant resemblance to that time-honored genre. The overall mood may best be described as funereal, epitomizing themes of a mostly exploratory nature, interrupted all too seldom by passages that are more akin to the essence of traditional jazz. As the composers, David Braid and Philippe Cote, are well-known and well-respected in ...
Continue ReadingDerrick Gardner & The Big dig! Band: Still I Rise
by Jack Bowers
Trumpeter Derrick Gardner, a Chicagoan who has performed around the world with a who's who of jazz luminaries from Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie and Frank Foster to Nancy Wilson, Tony Bennett and Harry Connick Jr., to name only a few, traveled to Winnipeg, Canada, to assemble and record his Big Dig! Band, several sizes removed from Gardner's sextet, The Jazz Prophets, a working group since it was formed in New York City in 1991. Gardner not only shines as trumpet ...
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