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New England Jazz Collaborative: Tributaries
by Jack Bowers
Tributaries is the debut recording by the seventeen-member New England Jazz Collaborative whose origin and purpose are summed up as follows: “an artist-led non-profit collective dedicated to commissioning, presenting and documenting new music and expanding the audience for what remains a thrilling and vital musical form." The album consists of half a dozen fresh compositions by a quartet of talented composers and arrangers: NEJC founder Jeremy Cohen, Matan Rubinstein, Darryl Harper and Sam Spear, with the ensemble ably ...
Continue ReadingThe Greg Hopkins Jazz Orchestra: Chronography
by Jack Bowers
On Chronography, Boston-based trumpeter and composer Greg Hopkins and his 16-member Jazz Orchestra revitalize ten of the leader's never-before-recorded compositions and arrangements, most of them well-known standards from the Great American Songbook, that span more than half a century of astute and perceptive songwriting. The earliest, Willard Robison's “Old Folks," was arranged for the Buddy Rich band in 1972; the most recent, Duke Ellington's “In a Sentimental Mood," for his own orchestra in 2018. Between those dates rest ...
Continue ReadingBen Markley Big Band: Tuesday Morning Feeling
by Jack Bowers
When a bandleader says he plans to rely less on arranging the music of others to focus more on his own compositions and charts, the usual response is a prolonged sigh or indifferent shrug of the shoulders --which makes it all the more remarkable that when pianist and composer Ben Markley did exactly that on Tuesday Morning Blues, the third recording by the Colorado-based Ben Markley Big Band, the finished product demands not a sigh or shrug but a straight-from-the-heart ...
Continue ReadingMike Thompson: 6th Avenue
by Jack Bowers
Composer and arranger Mike Thompson was in his mid-twenties when 6th Avenue, his debut album as leader of a big band, was recorded (in the mid-2020s) at Q Division Studios in Cambridge, Massachusetts, enlisting for the most part veteran Boston-area musicians whom Thompson had met and befriended while studying at the Berklee School of Music, from which he was graduated in 2021. Although Thompson names Bob Brookmeyer, Maria Schneider and Igor Stravinsky as role models, you would be ...
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Omar Thomas Large Ensemble: Griot Songs
by Alberto Bazzurro
Dopo una lunga gestazione, giunge a noi questo che è il terzo lavoro del Large Ensemble diretto dal compositore newyorchese Omar Thomas (incisione del maggio 2024), un doppio album ambizioso e di chiaro intento anche didascalico in cui l'orchestra appare eloquentemente come il naturale prolungamento del gesto autoriale, con risultati di notevole impatto, sette brani di ampio respiro (dai nove ai diciassette minuti) in cui la massa orchestrale tende a muoversi per lo più compatta, lungo partiture belle piene, solide, ...
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Steven Feifke: The Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra
by Angelo Leonardi
Metti assieme un talentoso giovane orchestratore come Steven Feifke, un trombettista di prima grandezza come Bijon Watson e una big band con grandi nomi e prestigiosi ospiti e il risultato è scontato. Il debutto della Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra è stato propiziato dalla collaborazione col Jazz Education Network ed ha assunto le vesti di un album includendo in organico ospiti di rilievo come Kurt Elling, Sean Jones e Chad Lefkowitz Brown. Il principale riferimento è la tradizione ...
Continue ReadingGeneration Gap Jazz Orchestra: The Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra
by Jack Bowers
The Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra, co-led by pianist/composer Steven Feifke and trumpeter par excellence Bijon Watson, is a seventeen-member ensemble comprising seasoned players paired with young lions who are poised to capture pride of place. Nowhere do the leaders say who is in which group, and it would be impolitic to name them here. Suffice to say that some of the names may be more familiar than others--as, for example, trombonist John Fedchock who cut his teeth with one of ...
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