Jazz Articles about Jason Kush

About Jason Kush

Album Review

Simply narrating the resume of saxophonist/educator/writer/composer Jason Kush would require more space than is usually devoted to an entire review. For someone his age--or even someone older--Kush, currently an associate professor at Slippery Rock (PA) University, has had an exceptionally wide and productive career as a performer, teacher and author in a multitude of genres in the U.S. and around the world. What matters here, of course, is how well Kush fares on Finally Friday, the third ...

Album Review

South Florida Jazz Orchestra: Cheap Thrills: The Music Of Rick Margitza

Read "Cheap Thrills: The Music Of Rick Margitza" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 10, 2020

In 2019, the acclaimed Michigan-bred, Paris-based tenor saxophonist Rick Margitza thought he was being asked to contribute a couple of charts to the University of South Florida Jazz Orchestra's fifth recording in its fifteen-year history as a working ensemble. But when SFJO founder and leader Chuck Bergeron looked at the charts he had an even better idea, and asked Margitza to write and / or arrange everything on the album, which thus became Cheap Thrills: The Music of Rick Margitza. ...

Album Review

South Florida Jazz Orchestra: Cheap Thrills: The Music Of Rick Margitza

Read "Cheap Thrills: The Music Of Rick Margitza" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
October 8, 2020

The concept of a large, tightly-knit big band in a recording studio, on a concert or jazz club stage may just be a plug-in memory in today's environment. Fortunately there is the fifteenth anniversary recording of The South Florida Jazz Orchestra directed by bassist/bandleader Chuck Bergeron, entitled Cheap Thrills: The Music Of Rick Margitza, to remind us what a disciplined inventive big band sounds like. With the exception of George and Ira Gershwin's “Embraceable You," all the other ...