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About Chelsea McBride's Socialist Night School

Album Review

Chelsea McBride's Socialist Night School: Aftermath

Read "Aftermath" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
December 12, 2019

Aftermath is the second album by composer / arranger / tenor saxophonist Chelsea McBride's Toronto-based Socialist Night School. It's a bright-eyed ensemble, comprised for the most part of young musicians who are fully on board with McBride's contemporary approach to big-band jazz (think Muhal Richard Abrams, Julius Hemphill, Darcy James Argue or Charles Mingus with a touch more accord and a tad less dissonance). McBride's music is largely thematic and, as the group's title implies, broadly insurgent. ...

Album Review

Chelsea McBride's Socialist Night School: Aftermath

Read "Aftermath" reviewed by Franz A. Matzner

by Franz A. Matzner
November 28, 2019

Carve out an hour to listen to Socialist Night School's Aftermath because the combination of big-band music and progressive, challenging lyrics demands it. There's no way to let either simply wash over the ears. The music is too blunt, the lyrics too developed and too integral to absorb passively. The follow up to the equally ambitious The Twilight Fall (Browntasaurus Records, 2017), Aftermath is once again the brainchild of tenor saxophonist, conductor, and composer Chelsea McBride. With its ...