Jazz Articles about Carl Maraghi

About Carl Maraghi

Album Review

Gaia Wilmer Large Ensemble: Parabólico: Reflections on Gilberto Gil, Volume 1

Read "Parabólico: Reflections on Gilberto Gil, Volume 1" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
October 12, 2026

La bandleader e arrangiatrice brasiliana Gaia Wilmer dedica la sua attenzione alle musiche di Gilberto Gil tornando a incidere con una grande orchestra. Nella sua decennale attività discografica hanno infatti prevalso i medi organici e solo per le musiche di Egberto Gismonti ha guidato un'ampia formazione (Folia 2023). Con venti musicisti a sua disposizione, compresa la cantante Mônica Salmaso, Gaia ha modo d'evidenziare le personali doti di scrittura in dinamiche orchestrali raffinate e ricche di colore. Le riletture del repertorio ...

Album Review

Joe Syrian Motor City Jazz Octet: A Blue Time

Read "A Blue Time" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
June 10, 2026

Drummer Joe Syrian's spit-shined Motor City Jazz Octet keeps driving emphatically forward on its second recording, A Blue Time, using an impressive arsenal to scurry through a generally agreeable lineup of more or less familiar themes that have been given fresh coats of paint by seven astute and talented arrangers. Even with the various harmonic and rhythmic changes, many of which were inspired by Syrian, the music remains lucid and accessible, thanks to the clever charts and spirited ...

Album Review

Trombocalist Big Band: The Vigil and the Sleeping Giant

Read "The Vigil and the Sleeping Giant" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 18, 2026

Even those whose batting averages are high are not immune from life's unforeseen and often disastrous curve balls. Low-brass multi-instrumentalist Ron Wilkins, riding the wave as a successful musician and bandleader, learned that the hard way when he was struck by Covid in 2020 and spent more than a month in a medically induced coma with the outcome clearly in doubt. As it turns out, fortune smiled on Wilkins, and after relearning such basics as breathing normally, walking, ...

Album Review

Wycliffe Gordon: Holiday Fun!

Read "Holiday Fun!" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
December 2, 2025

Trombonist Wycliffe Gordon takes listeners on a pleasurable trip to his childhood and invites them to summon their own precious memories of Holiday Fun! on this splendid new seasonal recording from Arbors Jazz. Gordon has enlisted an all-star ensemble of like-minded musicians and friends to heighten the fun, stepping merrily through a litany of holiday favorites from “Winter Wonderland" to “Frosty the Snowman," “Silent Night" to “Joy to the World," before closing with the venerable “Auld Lang ...

Album Review

Joe Syrian: Secret Message

Read "Secret Message" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci

by Richard J Salvucci
April 14, 2025

A title like Secret Message does make a listener wonder what it might be. Is it deeply subversive, like the Zimmerman Telegram, or apocalyptic, like Fatima? Of course, as someone is reputed to have said, 'Sometimes, a cigar is just a smoke.' So it is possible to over-interpret a title, which may, in the final analysis, simply be a title. Joe Syrian is a Detroit-based drummer, a city that can claim Brian Blade, J. C. Heard, ...

Album Review

Mike Holober & The Gotham Jazz Orchestra: This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters

Read "This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
March 9, 2025

This Rock We're On, acclaimed composer and pianist Mike Holober's 2024 recording as leader of the Gotham Jazz Orchestra, is challenging to summarize in mere words, as it consists of a multi-part suite (on two CDs) which blends jazz, classical and art songs in a thematic environment that uses a series of “imaginary letters" from a half dozen writers, artists and activists. Holober's orchestral response to them is the premise for “a meditation on the beauty of nature and the ...

Album Review

Christopher Zuar Orchestra: Exuberance

Read "Exuberance" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
December 30, 2024

È decisamente un periodo d'oro per l'orchestrazione jazz. Ai molti bandleader e arrangiatori emersi nel nuovo millennio, si aggiunge decisamente Christopher Zuar, che firma il secondo album confermando le doti espresse in Musings (Sunnyside), il debutto di otto anni fa. Con un diploma al New England Conservatory e un master alla Manhattan School of Music, Zuar aggiunge una spiccata fantasia nell'arricchire il modern mainstream orchestrale di nuove suggestioni. Questo progetto è stato concepito tra il 2017 e ...