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Mike Holober and the Gotham Jazz Orchestra: Hiding Out
by Jerome Wilson
Mike Holober is a celebrated composer and arranger who has worked for ensembles like the Westchester Jazz Orchestra in New York and the WDR and HR Big Bands in Germany. He is also the leader and founder of the Gotham Jazz Orchestra which here makes its first appearance on record in ten years. Holober makes this return a fruitful one, coming up with a 2CD set featuring two long suites, both with themes involving American landscapes. The first ...
Continue ReadingMike Holober and the Gotham Jazz Orchestra: Hiding Out
by Jack Bowers
Mike Holober has been Hiding Out rather openly for the past ten years or so, waiting for the proper time to gather together his world-class Gotham Jazz Orchestra and record for the first time since 2009's widely acclaimed album Quake (Sunnyside), in which his picturesque compositions and arrangements were compared favorably to those of Duke Ellington and Gil Evans, to name only two. In the interim, Holober has hardly been sitting on his hands, serving time as director of New ...
Continue ReadingMike Holober and the Gotham Jazz Orchestra: Hiding Out
by Dan Bilawsky
If musical polymath Mike Holober is hiding out, he's doing it in plain sight. Constantly in demand, his work as a pianist, conductor, arranger and composer has drawn plenty of attention. In the past 15 years alone he has served as the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Westchester Jazz Orchestra (from 2007-2013), the Associate Guest Conductor of the hr-Bigband (from 2011-2015), and the Associate Director of the BMI Jazz Composer's Workshop (from 2007-2015). In that same stretch of time, ...
Continue ReadingMike Holober and the Gotham Jazz Orchestra: Hiding Out
by Karl Ackermann
Mike Holober's background as a classical pianist and conductor is just one thing that sets Hiding Out apart from the current crop of big band releases. Holober has worked in a variety of settings from solo, duo, and quintet to large ensembles. Two previous recordings with his Gotham Jazz Orchestra were the critically acclaimed Thought Trains (Sons of Sound Records, 2004) and Quake (Sunnyside Records, 2009), comprised of covers and original Holober compositions. On the ambitious double-disc Hiding Out, Holober ...
Continue ReadingDave Pietro: New Road: Iowa Memoirs
by Jack Bowers
In 2011, New York City-based saxophonist Dave Pietro was invited to spend three weeks as artist-in-residence at the University of Iowa. While there, he worked with young musicians in school programs across the state. It proved to be a rewarding commission for the native New Englander who was so enheartened that he chose to recreate the experience musically on his seventh album as leader, New Road: Iowa Memoirs. The journey begins quietly with Pietro's impression of “Sunrise ...
Continue ReadingDave Pietro: New Road: Iowa Memoirs
by Dan Bilawsky
In essence, New Road: Iowa Memoirs is the story of an urbanite's awakening to the rural lure. But to state this album's meaning in such reductive terms is to minimize its power and undercut the very beauty that inspired its creation in the first place. Back in 2011 and 2012, The University of Iowa tapped multi-reedist Dave Pietro to serve as an artist-in-residence for several weeks at that institution and surrounding schools. While Pietro, a mainstay on ...
Continue ReadingDave Pietro: The Chakra Suite
by Elliott Simon
Alto saxophonist Dave Pietro is a heck of a bop player who, with his recent projects, has integrated world music and culture into his oeuvre. The Chakra Suite is a concept album that uses the seven bodily energy centers, or chakras, that are central to Indian medicine, as an organizational framework. These move in ascending order from base/natural to the more supreme/ethereal, and the ambiance of each tune is a musical abstraction of each chakra within Pietro's accessible but innovative ...
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