Jazz Articles about Dave Pietro

About Dave Pietro

Album Review

"The jazz bandstand is where true democracy lives," the great saxophonist and composer Jimmy Heath told a young Helen Sung. “Everyone must understand their role and come prepared by doing the hard work of study and practice," he said. “Each person will get to say their piece, but it is in the act of integrating as a band that the musicians ultimately create something bigger, richer, and deeper." Oracles launches into a time and place where divisions are deep and ...

Album Review

Pete McGuinness: Mixed Bag

Read "Mixed Bag" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
May 25, 2026

Quella che Pete McGuinness guida a New York è tra le poche orchestre capaci di coniugare smagliante professionalità tecnica, ricercatezza e fantasia. È una big band incantevole eppure è meno nota di quanto meriti e quest'album è solo il quarto registrato in due decenni di vita. McGuinness ha operato come trombonista dalla fine degli anni ottanta e come bandleader dal 2006, dopo aver messo a frutto gli studi svolti con Bob Brookmeyer e Bill Holman. Da qualche anno ha dovuto interrompere l'uso del ...

Album Review

Maria Schneider Orchestra: American Crow

Read "American Crow" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
March 24, 2026

Maria Schneider has a thing for birds. Credible sources have reported sightings of the jazz composer frequenting Central Park wearing a floppy hat, a pair of binoculars hanging from her neck. Her 20-plus minute “Cerulean Skies," from her album (one of her masterpieces) Sky Blue (ArtistShare, 2007) speaks to her love for birds; her fascination with their migratory nature and their arduous flights, which span continents and beyond. The composition “Bluebird," from the “Our Natural World"' half of her 2-disc ...

Album Review

Pete McGuinness: Mixed Bag

Read "Mixed Bag" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
June 12, 2025

With Mixed Bag, Pete McGuinness once again affirms his place among the elite of modern big band composers and arrangers, presenting a luminous tapestry of jazz idioms that ranges from the exuberantly traditional to the adventurously modern. As the title suggests, the album is a delightful potpourri. However, rather than feeling scattered or unfocused, McGuinness weaves his eclectic inclinations into a coherent and emotionally engaging statement. He brings to bear not only the encyclopedic command of a seasoned jazz craftsman ...

Album Review

The Pete McGuinness Jazz Orchestra: Mixed Bag

Read "Mixed Bag" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
June 4, 2025

Award-winning arranger Pete McGuinness has chosen to name the fourth recording by his stellar New York-based Jazz Orchestra Mixed Bag, a term whose meaning may be construed as positive or less so, depending on the context. As he explains in the album's liner notes, McGuinness accentuates the positive, writing that to him, “Variety has always been the spice of life. I don't like the feeling of being pigeon-holed into a certain bag...For this project...I've included many 'bags' that I love ...

Album Review

Ryan Truesdell: Shades of Sound

Read "Shades of Sound" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
June 2, 2025

Shades of Sound costituisce il secondo volume del Gil Evans Project di Ryan Truesdell, inciso dal vivo al Jazz Standard di New York. Data d'incisione e organico sono gli stessi di Lines of Color, il primo volume registrato dal 13 al 18 maggio 2014 con una formazione di 23 musicisti più il leader, scelti tra i solisti più brillanti di New York: i sassofonisti Donny McCaslin, Dave Pietro, Steve Wilson, i trombettisti Mat Jodrell e Greg Gisbert, i trombonisti Ryan ...

Album Review

Ryan Truesdell / Gil Evans Project: Shades Of Sound

Read "Shades Of Sound" reviewed by Jack Kenny

by Jack Kenny
May 30, 2025

Shades of Sound is not about Ryan Truesdell recreating the past. There are excellent reasons to listen to recreations of the music of Gil Evans. As critic Bill Mathieu wrote of Evans, “The mind reels at the intricacy of his orchestral and developmental techniques. His scores are so careful, so formally well-constructed, so mindful of tradition that you feel the originals should be preserved under glass in a Florentine museum" (Mathieu in Max Harrison, Jazz Profiles, 2011). Evans ...