Jazz Articles about Evan Gregor

About Evan Gregor

Album Review

Following its splendid premiere recording, an exploration of Miles Davis' unrivaled album Kind Of Blue (Capitol Records, 1959), composer/arranger Jon Schapiro's 17-member ensemble broadens its horizons on Human Qualities, pairing seven of the maestro's astute and adventurous charts with the Roberta Flack best-seller, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." This time around, Schapiro proves that he need rely on nothing more than his own considerable experience as a jazz artist to create an album that expresses his point ...

Album Review

Jihye Lee Orchestra: Daring Mind

Read "Daring Mind" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
March 10, 2021

Listening to bandleader/composer Jihye Lee and her mic-drop orchestra is like watching your life flash before your eyes. You see it all: All the richness of spirit one can attain. All the sadness one can espouse. All the waltzing mischief to which one can aspire. Testing malleability at every turn, Lee's on to an eclectic something that doesn't pass through the torpor too often: A lucid, active imagination. Thus Daring Mind, Lee's Motema Music debut, co-produced by Darcy ...

Album Review

Schapiro 17: New Shoes: Kind of Blue at 60

Read "New Shoes: Kind of Blue at 60" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
September 7, 2020

Miles Davis' album Kind Of Blue (Columbia, 1959) is the best-selling jazz album of all time and has been highly influential for the last 60 years. Most of its five tracks have become jazz standards and have been interpreted time and again. However it is rare to see the entire album reworked to the extent that Jon Schapiro and his big band, Schapiro 17, do here. The tracks undergo extensive retooling, expanding into big band arrangements that carry on the ...

Album Review

Schapiro 17: New Shoes: Kind of Blue at 60

Read "New Shoes: Kind of Blue at 60" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 10, 2020

2019 marked the sixtieth anniversary of the Miles Davis sextet's acclaimed album, Kind of Blue (Columbia). While the tributes didn't exactly pour in, New York-based composer / arranger Jon Schapiro took it upon himself not only to revisit that classic session but to re-orchestrate it for a large ensemble (the Schapiro 17) and flesh it out with half a dozen compositions of his own and another by pianist Roberta Piket. In keeping with the spirit of the occasion, all of ...