Jazz Articles about Dave Riekenberg

About Dave Riekenberg

Album Review

Joe Syrian Motor City Jazz Octet: A Blue Time

Read "A Blue Time" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
June 10, 2026

Drummer Joe Syrian's spit-shined Motor City Jazz Octet keeps driving emphatically forward on its second recording, A Blue Time, using an impressive arsenal to scurry through a generally agreeable lineup of more or less familiar themes that have been given fresh coats of paint by seven astute and talented arrangers. Even with the various harmonic and rhythmic changes, many of which were inspired by Syrian, the music remains lucid and accessible, thanks to the clever charts and spirited ...

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

Chris Parker Septet: Reunion

by Jack Bowers
March 30, 2026

This is a Reunion that Chris Parker was lucky to celebrate. In August 2023, eight months after recording his fifth album as leader and while vacationing in his native Oregon, Parker suffered a serious stroke that left him (temporarily) unable to walk or use his left hand when playing the piano. Before that misfortune struck, Parker had re-scored for septet a dozen songs he had been playing for years in various formats, from solo or trio to quartet or quintet. ...

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

Bill Warfield and the Hell's Kitchen Funk Orchestra: Smile

by Jack Bowers
June 21, 2020

Having no idea what to expect from an ensemble labeled the Hell's Kitchen Funk Orchestra, the game plan must be to advance with caution, as any orchestra with trumpeter Bill Warfield at the helm can't be all bad. After listening, it becomes clear that the game plan was sound and the premise accurate: Smile, the HKFO's second recording, isn't all bad. The question is: did Warfield and the orchestra have its own game plan? If snatching every ingredient within reach ...

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Album Review

Dave Riekenberg: Never Too Late

by Jack Bowers
August 2, 2002

Another well-upholstered album of contemporary straight-ahead Jazz that gives absolutely no cause for complaint but fewer reasons than one might expect to become excited. Its title, Never Too Late, is an appropriate metaphor for tenor Dave Riekenberg's long-overdue debut as leader of his own quartet after years on the road with Woody Herman's orchestra and Blood, Sweat & Tears and many more gigging around New York City and performing as a woodwind specialist on Broadway. Riekenberg, known as “Bopper," is ...