Jazz Articles about Jason Rigby

About Jason Rigby

Album Review

Mike Holober: This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters

Read "This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
October 1, 2024

We live on a rock. A few billion years of the workings of the complexities of carbon chemistry put us here. The systems and intricacies of every element that has unfolded to maintain us should be respected and preserved. Mike Holober's This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters, featuring Holober and his Gotham Jazz Orchestra, digs into this theme in a sprawling, two-disc big band jazz outing. Like life itself, and the resulting ecosystems, this multi-movement suite--an effort that is the ...

Album Review

Jihye Lee Orchestra: Infinite Connections

Read "Infinite Connections" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
August 19, 2024

Su queste pagine abbiamo seguito il percorso discografico di Jihye Lee a partire dal suo esordio (April, 2017) ed il successivo Daring Mind (Motéma 2021), co-prodotto con Darcy James Argue. La collaborazione con quest'ultimo si ripropone anche nel nuovo Infinite Connections, registrato nell'ottobre 2023, che evidenzia un significativo passo avanti nella sua sintesi tra jazz e proprie radici musicali. Che la bandleader fosse un talento eccezionale è apparso chiaro dalla rapidità con cui ha padroneggiato le tecniche ...

Album Review

Jihye Lee Orchestra: Infinite Connections

Read "Infinite Connections" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
July 22, 2024

One of the most ambitious composers working exclusively in the large-ensemble format, Jihye Lee is now offering her third release, coming on the heels of the well-received April (Self-released, 2017) and Daring Mind (Motéma Music, 2021). Lee is a fearless artist with a seemingly limitless imagination, with a multiplicity of themes and rhythms swirling through her complex, densely-layered compositions. And as always, she once again has a terrific group of colleagues to help bring her rich, multi-hued vision to life. ...

Album Review

Christopher Zuar Orchestra: Exuberance

Read "Exuberance" reviewed by Katchie Cartwright

by Katchie Cartwright
May 13, 2024

Exuberance is part of a “long-form tonal conversation" between composer Christopher Zuar and animator Anne Beal. Zuar, a Long Island New Yorker, describes the work as “a journey of personal growth," which began in 2017 when he and Beal met as fellows at the MacDowell Colony in the woods of New Hampshire. He explains that the album is a “collaborative project that charts the last seven years of our lives." “In Winter Blooms," the opening track, grew out ...

Album Review

Miho Hazama M_Unit: Beyond Orbits

Read "Beyond Orbits" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
October 2, 2023

Uno degli eventi al Monterey Jazz Festival del 2021 è stato il concerto dell'M_Unit di Miho Hazama, la giovane compositrice e bandleader giapponese che s'è imposta tra le figure più innovative della sua generazione. In quell'occasione Hazama ha presentato la suite in tre movimenti “Exoplanet" che--incisa poi in studio--costituisce il fulcro del disco appena pubblicato dalla Edition Records. Chi conosce i suoi lavori di questi anni, sa quanto la scrittura della bandleader risulti coinvolgente per l'abilità di ...

Album Review

Miho Hazama's M_Unit: Beyond Orbits

Read "Beyond Orbits" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
September 29, 2023

Beyond Orbits is the fêted composer and conductor Miho Hazama's fourth album with M_Unit. She founded the band in 2012, two years after moving from Tokyo to New York and while she was still studying for a masters in jazz composition at the Manhattan School of Music. Hazama released M_Unit's first album in 2013. The band's third, Dancer In Nowhere (Sunnyside, 2019), was nominated for a Grammy. Among her other achievements, Hazama was in 2019 appointed chief ...

Album Review

Mark Guiliana Jazz Quartet: The Sound Of Listening

Read "The Sound Of Listening" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
September 24, 2022

There is something tantalisingly out of reach on the Mark Guiliana Jazz Quartet's The Sound Of Listening. It is not “difficult" music, but it is cryptic. After multiple replays the code remains unbroken. It seems something important is going on but... what exactly? It is rather like encountering Guiliana's fellow New Yorker, tenor saxophonist Oded Tzur for the first time. The music is not alien, but there is something deeply different about it. Coincidentally, Guiliana's pianist on ...