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Album Review

Jax Jazz Collective: All the Things You Are: The Music of Jerome Kern

Read "All the Things You Are: The Music of Jerome Kern" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
May 1, 2015

This is a marvelous approach to making jazz recordings: picking one Great American Songbook composer at time and exploring a set of his tunes, with a personal touch. Pianist Oscar Peterson released a series of tributes to the Standards tune-smith's on Verve Record back in the 1950s, tagged “Songbooks," celebrating George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Jerome Kern. The Jax Jazz Collective, out of Jacksonville, Florida, seems to be starting similar journey. In 2014 it was Lotus Blossom: ...

Album Review

Jax Jazz Collective: Lotus Blossom: The Music of Billy Strayhorn

Read "Lotus Blossom: The Music of Billy Strayhorn" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
October 1, 2014

Duke Ellington (1899-1974)--Americas's finest bandleader, America's finest composer--released his own tribute to Billy Strayhorn, his partner in music and tune smithing. It was called ...And His Mother Called Him Bill (RCA, 1967). Ellington and Strayhorn's music was so intertwined that the Duke's less that fanatic fans might think that “Lush Life," “Take the A Train" and “Lotus Blossom" are Ellington tunes. But those classics, and many more, came from the prolific and always elegant pen of Strayhorn. Now ...