Jazz Articles about Glenn Zaleski

About Glenn Zaleski

Album Review

Jon De Lucia: The Brubeck Octet Project Strikes Again!

Read "The Brubeck Octet Project Strikes Again!" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 25, 2026

After his recording of The Brubeck Octet Project earned widespread approval and acclaim in 2024, saxophonist and jazz historian Jon De Lucia did not rest on those laurels; instead, he delved even more deeply into the original octet's archives and unearthed eleven little-known arrangements that form the basis of a second blockbuster album, The Brubeck Octet Project Strikes Again! And what a strike it is--every inch as perceptive and impressive as De Lucia's earlier survey of the Dave Brubeck Octet, ...

Album Review

Davy Mooney, Ko Omura: The Word

Read "The Word" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
April 2, 2026

Il chitarrista statunitense Davy Mooney e il batterista giapponese Ko Omura riprendono in mano una collaborazione risalente al 2018, che aveva già fruttato l'album Benign Strangers, edito da Sunnyside, e che era stata bloccata dalla pandemia, a cui fa seguito questo The Word per la medesima etichetta. Il lavoro vede in azione la stessa formazione di allora, un quintetto completato dall'eclettico sassofonista e clarinettista John Ellis, dall'eccellente e ormai ben noto pianista Glenn Zaleski e dal contrabbassista Matt ...

Album Review

Nick Finzer: The Jazz Orchestra Volume 1

Read "The Jazz Orchestra Volume 1" reviewed by Carl Medsker

by Carl Medsker
September 1, 2025

Listening chronologically to seven of Nick Finzer's preceding albums is enlightening and entertaining, making several aspects of his musicianship abundantly apparent. His trombone sound is full and expressive, his playing melodious and he can soulfully sing a ballad. Six albums, dating back to 2013, featured his highly talented sextet, a significant accomplishment that enhances the depth and confidence of the recordings. But Finzer's evolving skills in arranging his fresh compositions truly distinguish his work. He choreographs his bandmates amidst lovely ...

Album Review

Christopher Zuar Orchestra: Exuberance

Read "Exuberance" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
December 30, 2024

È decisamente un periodo d'oro per l'orchestrazione jazz. Ai molti bandleader e arrangiatori emersi nel nuovo millennio, si aggiunge decisamente Christopher Zuar, che firma il secondo album confermando le doti espresse in Musings (Sunnyside), il debutto di otto anni fa. Con un diploma al New England Conservatory e un master alla Manhattan School of Music, Zuar aggiunge una spiccata fantasia nell'arricchire il modern mainstream orchestrale di nuove suggestioni. Questo progetto è stato concepito tra il 2017 e ...

Album Review

Christopher Zuar Orchestra: Exuberance

Read "Exuberance" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
December 23, 2024

Composer/arranger Christopher Zuar's second album, Exuberance, recounts in musical terms a twisting yet picturesque journey that began seven years earlier, in 2017, when Zuar first met his now-wife, the animator Anne Beal, at MacDowell, the famed artists' residency in New Hampshire. While the relationship “blooms" in winter, there are “moments between" and other inescapable detours until “certainty" erases any lingering doubts, “exuberance" carries the day and Zuar and Beal are united as one. Yes, the music is ...

Album Review

Jon De Lucia: The Brubeck Octet Project

Read "The Brubeck Octet Project" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
November 19, 2024

Having formed his jazz octet in 2016 for a project at City College of New York, where he was then teaching, Brooklyn-based alto saxophonist Jon De Lucia had to find new music to keep it going--a search that led him to the archives at Mills College, which housed many of Dave Brubeck's original handwritten charts among the papers of the octet's tenor saxophonist and arranger, Dave Van Kriedt. Eight years later, after extensive research, much hard work ...

Album Review

Mareike Wiening: Reveal

Read "Reveal" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
October 15, 2024

Registrato a Brooklyn e prodotto da Dave Douglas, quest'album della batterista tedesca Mareike Wiening, alla testa del suo quintetto, dà conto dei suoi sei anni di esperienza newyorchese, durante i quali ha avuto modo di perfezionare la propria esperienza jazzistica e di lavorare con musicisti del calibro di John Zorn, Ben Wendel, Stefon Harris e lo stesso Douglas, presente qui come espite in tre brani. La formazione, piuttosto classica, interpreta sette composizioni della Wiening e una originale rielaborazione ...