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The Brian Martin Big Band: Old Home/New Home

by Jack Bowers
Brian Martin, who as a working musician wears many hats--trombonist, composer, arranger, educator and band leader among them--has taken those hats from his native Iowa and given them a new mailing address in the Boston, Massachusetts, area. Which is a big deal. Big enough, at least, for Martin to have devoted much of Old Home/New Home, the Brian Martin Big Band's debut recording, to the ins and outs and ups and downs of leaving one's friendly confines to plant new ...
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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