Jazz Articles about Darren Kramer

About Darren Kramer

Album Review

Ben Markley Big Band: Tuesday Morning Feeling

Read "Tuesday Morning Feeling" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 24, 2026

When a bandleader says he plans to rely less on arranging the music of others to focus more on his own compositions and charts, the usual response is a prolonged sigh or indifferent shrug of the shoulders --which makes it all the more remarkable that when pianist and composer Ben Markley did exactly that on Tuesday Morning Blues, the third recording by the Colorado-based Ben Markley Big Band, the finished product demands not a sigh or shrug but a straight-from-the-heart ...

Album Review

David Caffey Jazz Orchestra: At the Edge of Spring

Read "At the Edge of Spring" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
February 13, 2025

With his album, At the Edge of Spring, composer and arranger David Caffey and his Colorado-based Jazz Orchestra not only defy the widely-held belief that big bands are dead, they emphatically blow that axium out of the water. This is an ensemble with no discernible weaknesses, as proficient and powerful as any that have come before it or are likely to follow. To verify that impression, you need only couple your ears with an open mind. As ...

Album Review

Wil Swindler: Space Bugs

Read "Space Bugs" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
February 23, 2023

Space Bugs is essentially multi-layered yet readily accessible chamber jazz admirably performed by saxophonist/composer Wil Swindler's Colorado-based Eleventet—a finely woven banquet for the ears that was handsomely recorded in May 2022 before an appreciative audience at Denver's Mighty Fine Productions. Gil Evans springs to mind when listening, as do Pete Rugolo and late- career Bob Brookmeyer. As a composer, Swindler writes that he has “always been between worlds," loving “the pristine intervals and warm timbres of orchestral ...