Jazz Articles about Dion Tucker

About Dion Tucker

Album Review

Carlos Henriquez: Monk Con Clave

Read "Monk Con Clave" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
June 6, 2026

Carlos Henriquez has long understood that rhythm tells stories long before words arrive. On Monk Con Clave, he takes Thelonious Monk's angular brilliance and brings it back to the streets, dance halls, and other crowded spaces across New York's Afro-Caribbean neighbourhoods. The result is not merely a tribute album but a living dialogue between Monk's genius and Henriquez's Nuyorican identity. Leading his self-named big band, Henriquez has assembled a remarkable multigenerational ensemble featuring musicians from the Jazz at ...

Album Review

Colin Hancock's Jazz Hounds Featuring Catherine Russell: Cat & The Hounds

Read "Cat & The Hounds" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
September 3, 2025

Catherine Russell teams up with Colin Hancock's Jazz Hounds for the release Cat & The Hounds, a recording exploring the roots of Black popular music from the early 1920s. Far from simply nostalgic, the project acts as a lively revival of an evolving art form, balancing the syncopated ragtime style and blues-infused improvisations that defined the Jazz Age. Russell's commanding voice, rich with warmth and character, serves as the perfect centre of attention as the band uncovers rare and overlooked ...

Album Review

Etienne Charles: Creole Orchestra Featuring René Marie

Read "Creole Orchestra Featuring René Marie" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
September 2, 2024

A 18 anni di distanza dal debutto discografico in Culture Shock il trombettista originario di Trinidad & Tobago, si cimenta come bandleader di un ampio organico, in una lussureggiante sintesi di ritmi caraibici e orchestrazioni che vanno dalla tradizione Swing all'hip hop. L'orchestra è un ampliamento della sua storica Creole Soul Band e ospita la cantante René Marie in quattro brani. Etienne ha iniziato a scrivere per ampi organici a partire dalla collaborazione con la stessa cantante ...

Album Review

Etienne Charles: Creole Orchestra Featuring René Marie

Read "Creole Orchestra Featuring René Marie" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
June 12, 2024

Trinidad-born Etienne Charles has been fortunate in his associates during his development as a jazz musician. One of the first friends he made on arrival in the U.S.A. in the early 2000s to study at Florida State University was faculty member Marcus Roberts. Among much else, the pianist taught Charles the importance of keeping in touch with his roots. “He always said make sure you put where you're from in your music," says Charles in the press materials accompanying his ...

Album Review

Andy Farber and His Orchestra: Early Blue Evening

Read "Early Blue Evening" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 5, 2021

Saxophonist Andy Farber's New York-based orchestra came together and cut its teeth as the onstage band for three hundred performances of After Midnight, a Broadway revue that paid tribute to Jazz Age nightclub luminaries from Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford and Count Basie to Harold Arlen, Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh. As one might presume from the orchestra's provenance, echoes of Ellington and Basie can readily be discerned on its first recording since After Midnight closed in 2014--but Farber, who wrote ...

Album Review

Mike LeDonne: It's All Your Fault

Read "It's All Your Fault" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
July 13, 2021

Even though listed on only four tracks, organist Mike LeDonne's superlative Groover Quartet performs on every one of the nine selections on LeDonne's admirable new recording, It's All Your Fault--and that's a good thing, as each member of the quartet (LeDonne, tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander, guitarist Peter Bernstein, drummer Joe Farnsworth) is an accomplished soloist and ardent team player. On the album's remaining tracks, the quartet is assimilated into LeDonne's seventeen- member big band, a taut and high-powered unit that ...