Jazz Articles about Chris Colangelo

About Chris Colangelo

Album Review

Mark Masters Ensemble: Sam Rivers 100

Read "Sam Rivers 100" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
May 26, 2025

The Mark Masters Ensemble released Porgy and Bess Redefined! (Capri Records) in 2005. The music was taken from the George Gershwin/DuBose Heyward English-language opera, which was first performed in 1935. Masters' take on the classic was brilliantly expressed by the ensemble, who dug into his adventurous charts with freedom mixed with respect for the familiar and often-covered (most notably by the Miles Davis/Gil Evans teaming) original. It was a breakout effort for Masters. Billy Harper was there on tenor sax, ...

Album Review

Mark Masters Ensemble: Dance, Eternal Spirits, Dance!

Read "Dance, Eternal Spirits, Dance!" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 24, 2025

In 2023-24, the celebrated arranger Mark Masters led his superb southern California-based ensemble into studios to record a pair of tribute albums. The first, Sam Rivers 100, was dedicated to the music of the late saxophonist on the one hundredth anniversary of his birth; the second, Dance, Eternal Spirits, Dance!, to that of another renowned saxophonist, Billy Harper, who is not only very much alive at age eighty-two but serves as guest soloist on both recordings. Unlike ...

Album Review

Mark Masters: Sam Rivers 100

Read "Sam Rivers 100" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 23, 2025

Sam Rivers 100 is the first of two homages recorded in 2023-24 by arranger Mark Masters and his blue chip southern California-based ensemble. This one pays tribute to the music of the late saxophonist Sam Rivers on the hundredth anniversary of his birth; the second, Dance, Eternal Spirits, Dance! salutes the music of tenor saxophonist Billy Harper who is the ensemble's guest soloist on both albums. Rivers, who died in December 2011, was an early bebopper who ...

Album Review

Matt Gordy: Be With Me

Read "Be With Me" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci

by Richard J Salvucci
February 10, 2022

There is an expression of high regard for playing, “in the tradition," which basically means, yeah, that is jazz, music of the highest order. Matt Gordy's “Be With Me" is particularly arresting because it is in the tradition, but neither a recreation nor an exercise in nostalgia. Everyone from Charlie Christian to Modern Jazz Quartet has played “Topsy" (1937) in one form or another. It lends itself to multiple blues changes and swing to boppish solos, all of ...

Album Review

The Matt Gordy Jazz Tonite Sextet: Be With Me

Read "Be With Me" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
January 11, 2022

In 2006, drummer Matt Gordy heeded the mandate to “go west, young man," moving from Boston to Los Angeles, while he was still “young at heart," and quickly becoming a mainstay of the local scene, after years of success as a jazz and classical drummer in New England, and even with the Maracaibo, Venezuela, Symphony Orchestra, where he spent nine years as chief percussionist. After fifteen years gigging in Los Angeles, Gordy decided it was time to record his first ...

Album Review

The Jazz All Stars: The Jazz All Stars Volume 1

Read "The Jazz All Stars Volume 1" reviewed by Jim Worsley

by Jim Worsley
February 25, 2021

The gigless times of 2020--the year of the Covid-19 pandemic--could have brought musicians and the industry to their collective knees, gasping for air. Instead, it resulted in more new music than ever before. It filled our lungs with fresh air. It filled our hearts and souls, not to mention our ears. New businesses opening, defying the odds and pursuing their dreams, is a relevant factor. Le Coq Records, emerging in 2020, boldly presents an all-star ensemble—featuring many of ...

Album Review

Chris Colangelo: Elaine's Song

by AAJ Italy Staff
February 2, 2011

C'è un grandissimo senso dello swing, un unione d'intenti rara e un'intensità espressiva di sicuro spessore in Elaine's Song, il nuovo lavoro di Chris Colangelo, contrabbassita e compositore di base a Los Angeles. Per dar vita a una scaletta perlopiù strutturata attorno a degli originali, il leader si contorna di musicisti in grado di garantire un'ampia aperura di compasso timbrico - sono tre i fiatisti in squadra (Bob Sheppard, Benn Clatworthy e Zane Musa) pronti ad alternarsi o ad esprimersi ...