Jazz Articles about Charles Pillow

About Charles Pillow

Album Review

Jazz triple-threat Bria Skonberg is back, singing, scatting and playing eloquent trumpet on Indigo, the Canadian-born artist's eighth recording as leader of her own group (one of which, Bria, earned Canada's JUNO Award in 2017 for best Vocal Jazz Album of the Year). In Skonberg's ongoing back-and-forth between voice and trumpet, voice seems to have gained the upper hand here, as she sings on every one of the album's nine numbers (including one of her own) and plays ...

Album Review

Chuck Bergeron: Bass & Face

Read "Bass & Face" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
June 26, 2026

There is a certain confidence that comes with age and experience. It is the kind that allows a musician to gather friends, trust their instincts, and let the music tell its own story. Bassist Chuck Bergeron's Bass and Face feels exactly like that. As one of Florida's long-admired and versatile players, Bergeron proves himself to be an equally thoughtful curator. What makes this release inviting is that Bergeron surrounds himself with an extraordinary lineup of vocal personalities, each bringing a ...

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 ...

Album Review

Christopher Zuar Orchestra: Exuberance

Read "Exuberance" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
December 23, 2024

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 ...

Album Review

Mike Holober & the Gotham City Orchestra: This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters

Read "This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
November 11, 2024

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, ...

Album Review

Mike Holober: This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters

Read "This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
October 1, 2024

We live on a rock. A few billion years of the workings of the complexities of carbon chemistry put us here. The systems and intricacies of every element that has unfolded to maintain us should be respected and preserved. Mike Holober's This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters, featuring Holober and his Gotham Jazz Orchestra, digs into this theme in a sprawling, two-disc big band jazz outing. Like life itself, and the resulting ecosystems, this multi-movement suite--an effort that is the ...