Jazz Articles about Ben Monder

About Ben Monder

Album Review

Benjamin Boone: The Poets Are Gathering

Read "The Poets Are Gathering" reviewed by Paul Rauch

by Paul Rauch
December 31, 2020

Saxophonist Benjamin Boone continues his ambitious foray into jazz and poetry, this time recruiting an impressive cadre of poets for his aptly entitled release, The Poets are Gathering (Origin, 2020). The union of poetry and jazz has never been so powerfly presented, reflecting the past year of the worldwide Black Lives Matter movement, the universal role of the poet, and the power of art and voice to raise awareness and inspire change. The album employs the likes of US Poet ...

Radio & Podcasts

Ben Monder, Sandy Evans, Andrea Keller, Ralph Alessi & Rich Halley

by Maurice Hogue
November 25, 2020

Monash University in Melbourne, Australia is the home of the Sir Zelman Cowen School Of Music. It's an excellent program that believes in challenging the students. One of the ways it does that is to bring in internationally recognized artists to perform and work directly with the students. This episode presents some of those Monash sessions. Guitarist Ben Monder and trumpeter Ralph Alessi traveled from the USA while Sydney's acclaimed saxophonist Sandy Evans joined her friend, the much praised pianist ...

Album Review

Maria Schneider Orchestra: Data Lords

Read "Data Lords" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
September 14, 2020

C'è molto da dire sul nuovo album di Maria Schneider ma la prima e più importante considerazione riguarda la musica: sorprendente per ricchezza e novità di soluzioni, tensione narrativa e sintesi tra ricerca e tradizione. È uno dei suoi dischi più avvincenti e innovativi. L'incubazione del progetto è durata alcuni anni (il precedente The Thompson Fields è del 2015) e si lega alla presa di coscienza della bandleader sui pericoli connessi alla raccolta dei dati personali dalle società dell'universo digitale. ...

Album Review

Maria Schneider: Data Lords

Read "Data Lords" reviewed by Pat Youngspiel

by Pat Youngspiel
September 12, 2020

Well someone doesn't seem too happy with the digital world. But that's nothing new for Maria Schneider. The Grammy-award winning composer and bandleader has been an outspoken critic of copyright abuses in the digital and streaming world of music for the biggest part of the last decade. On her newest effort, she sets her justified quarrels with the industry to music by juxtaposing the cold world of ones and zeroes, comprised on the first CD titled “The Digital World," in ...

Album Review

Julian Shore: Where We Started

Read "Where We Started" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
August 19, 2020

A pianist of uncommon sensitivity and graceful temperament, Julian Shore crafts music with atmosphere and feeling, aiming for emotional depth rather than settling for typical jazz devices. On Where We Started, his third release, he offers eight well-honed tracks which are both evocative and nuanced; while they might not win over the uninitiated in a crowded club, they offer plenty of introspective delights to listeners prepared to settle in with the music. Joined by a fine ensemble, Shore ...

Album Review

Maria Schneider Orchestra: Data Lords

Read "Data Lords" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
August 11, 2020

Composer Maria Schneider has long been writing and speaking about the dangers of the omnipresent digital universe, intellectual property theft, gathering and manipulation of personal data by big tech companies, the unchecked proliferation of false and misleading material, and so on. Those concerns form the basis of her latest musical project, Data Lords, a 2 CD set examining the conflicting realities of the digital and real worlds. The two CDs are labeled “The Digital World" and “Our Natural ...

Album Review

Maria Schneider: Data Lords

by Doug Hall
August 9, 2020

Maria Schneider, jazz pianist, orchestral composer and 2019 NEA Jazz Master, has just released a new double-album, Data Lords (artistShare, 2020), which creates poignant musical imagery about our data-driven world. Schneider, who has been an active advocate for musicians' rights and copyright, has followed-on this impact, citing “big data" companies as manipulators of music, culture and privacy. This collection of uniquely and emotionally rendered original compositions addresses the conflicting relationships between the digital and natural worlds, featuring Schneider's orchestra of ...