Jazz Articles about Jeff Claassen

About Jeff Claassen

Album Review

Composer and arranger Mike Thompson was in his mid-twenties when 6th Avenue, his debut album as leader of a big band, was recorded (in the mid-2020s) at Q Division Studios in Cambridge, Massachusetts, enlisting for the most part veteran Boston-area musicians whom Thompson had met and befriended while studying at the Berklee School of Music, from which he was graduated in 2021. Although Thompson names Bob Brookmeyer, Maria Schneider and Igor Stravinsky as role models, you would be ...

Album Review

Fernando Huergo: Relentless

Read "Relentless" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
September 26, 2024

Argentine-born bassist and composer Fernando Huergo's heavy-duty Massachusetts-based big band delivers the goods on Relentless, a taut and vibrant review of oppression, discrimination, environmental challenges and other social issues, interwoven with Huergo's lively tribute to the saxophonist Ornette Coleman and a charismatic and thought-provoking survey ("La Vida Sigue") on life after the Covid-19 pandemic, with all compositions and arrangements by the leader. This is well-designed, no-holds-barred big-band jazz, delivered with verve and enthusiasm by eighteen well-prepared musicians ...

Album Review

Mehmet Ali Sanlikol: Turkish Hipster: Tales From Swing To Psychedelic

Read "Turkish Hipster: Tales From Swing To Psychedelic" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 8, 2023

Those who believe the term Turkish Hipster has to be an oxymoron should get to know composer/arranger/multi-instrumentalist Mehmet Ali Sanlikol, a Turk whose seventh album, subtitled “Tales from Swing to Psychedelic," is about as hip as can be. Sanlikol knows where is going but chooses to get there in his own special way, using every weapon in his musical arsenal to create vivid sound pictures whose jazz components rest solidly within a Middle Eastern framework that set them apart from ...