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Jazz Articles about Carl Maraghi
Joe Syrian: Secret Message
by Richard J Salvucci
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, ...
Continue ReadingMike Holober & The Gotham Jazz Orchestra: This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters
by Jack Bowers
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 ...
Continue ReadingChristopher Zuar Orchestra: Exuberance
by Angelo Leonardi
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 ...
Continue ReadingChristopher Zuar Orchestra: Exuberance
by Jack Bowers
Composer/arranger Christopher Zuar's second album, Exuberance, recounts in musical terms a twisting yet picturesque journey that began seven years earlier, in 2017, when Zuar first met his now-wife, the animator Anne Beal, at MacDowell, the famed artists' residency in New Hampshire. While the relationship “blooms" in winter, there are “moments between" and other inescapable detours until “certainty" erases any lingering doubts, “exuberance" carries the day and Zuar and Beal are united as one. Yes, the music is ...
Continue ReadingJoe Syrian Motor City Jazz Octet: Secret Message
by Jack Bowers
No fuss, no frills here, simply forty-seven or so minutes of generally bright and engaging straight-ahead jazz, stylishly performed by drummer Joe Syrian's admirable Detroit-based octet. This is music the group plays often, blending standards from the Great American Songbook with more recent themes by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Leon Russell and others. The congenial session opens with a pair of well-traveled standards--"Bye Bye Blackbird," and “Star Eyes"--and closes with two more- -"Night and ...
Continue ReadingMike Holober & the Gotham City Orchestra: This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters
by Angelo Leonardi
Dopo gli ultimi superlativi album orchestrali (Balancing Act, Palmetto 2015 e Hiding Out, Zoho 2019) la nuova incisione di Mike Holober con la Gotham Jazz Orchestra non dovrebbe stupirci, eppure questo doppio album ci ha nuovamente colpito. L'aggiunta di Chris Potter, John Patitucci, Nir Felder e della cantante brasiliana Jamile Staevie Ayres all'orchestra rende infatti il progetto quanto mai esaltante. Questi nomi completano un organico già nutrito di solisti ragguardevoli come Marvin Stamm e Scott Wendholt alle trombe, ...
Continue ReadingRemy Le Boeuf: Heartland Radio
by Angelo Leonardi
Nel 2022 Remy Le Boeuf s'è trasferito da New York a Denver per dirigere il dipartimento “Jazz and Commercial Studies" presso la Lamont School of Music della locale università. La colonna sonora di quel lungo viaggio in autostrada è stata la musica delle radio che alternavano pop, rock, rhythm & blues, country, dance ed altro. “Non c'è molto jazz in mezzo al Paese" ha ricordato l'orchestratore e sassofonista ma la musica di quest'album (che riflette le emozioni di quell'itinerario) ...
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