Jazz Articles about Doug Olsen

About Doug Olsen

Album Review

New England Jazz Collaborative: Tributaries

Read "Tributaries" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
August 25, 2026

Tributaries is the debut recording by the seventeen-member New England Jazz Collaborative whose origin and purpose are summed up as follows: “an artist-led non-profit collective dedicated to commissioning, presenting and documenting new music and expanding the audience for what remains a thrilling and vital musical form." The album consists of half a dozen fresh compositions by a quartet of talented composers and arrangers: NEJC founder Jeremy Cohen, Matan Rubinstein, Darryl Harper and Sam Spear, with the ensemble ably ...

Album Review

Mehmet Ali Sanlikol: Turkish Hipster: Tales From Swing To Psychedelic

Read "Turkish Hipster: Tales From Swing To Psychedelic" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 8, 2023

Those who believe the term Turkish Hipster has to be an oxymoron should get to know composer/arranger/multi-instrumentalist Mehmet Ali Sanlikol, a Turk whose seventh album, subtitled “Tales from Swing to Psychedelic," is about as hip as can be. Sanlikol knows where is going but chooses to get there in his own special way, using every weapon in his musical arsenal to create vivid sound pictures whose jazz components rest solidly within a Middle Eastern framework that set them apart from ...

Album Review

The New World Jazz Composers Octet: The Next Stage

Read "The Next Stage" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
May 31, 2021

The jazz octet has long been somewhat of a “Swiss Army Knife" for composer-arrangers. Consider, for example, the great Dave Pell, Ornette Coleman, David Murray, and the J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding Octets. In the hands of great arrangers, the eight-piece format allows arrangers to leverage the flexibility and creativity of a “Messengers" frontline with the total sonic impact of a classic big band. The Next Stage from The New World Jazz Composers Octet is a superb ...

Album Review

Felipe Salles: The New Immigrant Experience

Read "The New Immigrant Experience" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
May 21, 2021

The New Immigrant Experience è un lavoro multimediale, che combina musica orchestrale e proiezioni video, ispirato all'esperienza dei Dreamers, persone protette dal programma Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Accanto al compact disc musicale il progetto include quindi un DVD (curato dalla regista Fernanda Faya) in cui Felipe Salles intervista giovani immigrati, raccogliendo storie di vita spesso dolorose. Quelle testimonianze sono servite al bandleader da ispirazione per questo nuovo lavoro col Felipe Salles Interconnections Ensemble, una big band di 20 elementi ...

Album Review

Felipe Salles Interconnections Ensemble: The New Immigrant Experience

Read "The New Immigrant Experience" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 3, 2020

Is it mere coincidence, or does the rise in the number of “concept" albums by jazz big bands signal that the trend is here to stay? Trumpeter Brian Lynch won a 2020 Grammy Award for his Journey Through Literature in Music, and there have been other tenet-based enterprises within the past year by Dan Jonas, John Bailey, Eric Weiss, the WDR Big Band, Marcus Shelby, the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, Chris Jentsch and others. Now comes The New Immigrant Experience, ...