Jazz Articles about Isabelle Lavoie

About Isabelle Lavoie

Album Review

Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra: Tidal Currents: East Meets West

Read "Tidal Currents: East Meets West" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
February 26, 2024

When it comes to appraising contemporary big bands, Canada's Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra is on equal footing with the best of them. For its seventh album, Tidal Currents, the WJO has engaged two of that country's leading jazz composers, Jill Townsend and Christine Jensen, to present in musical terms impressions of places that have a special meaning to them, in particular the bodies of water that inspired them in their younger years and up to this point in time.

Album Review

Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra: Voices: A Musical Heritage

Read "Voices: A Musical Heritage" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
February 8, 2023

No matter where in the world one looks, there is musical history worth exploring and celebrating--which is what the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra sets out to affirm on its sixth album, Voices: A Musical Heritage. Winnipeg is the capital of Canada's Manitoba Province, and Voices pays tribute to the area's rich and expansive musical fabric via a series of eight compositions designed to exemplify some of Manitoba's far-flung heritage: First Nations, Metis, Ukrainian, Jewish, Chilean, Brazilian, Nigerian and Icelandic.