Jazz Articles about Jim Gailloreto

About Jim Gailloreto

Album Review

Rich Willey: Laid Back Vol. 1, featuring John Swana

Read "Laid Back Vol. 1, featuring John Swana" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
June 20, 2026

Chicago-based trumpeter and composer Rich Willey oversees an impressive 11-piece ensemble on Laid Back, Vol. 1, which embodies seven of his melodically enticing and rhythmically strong compositions, all neatly arranged by Wally Minko. The one drawback in this otherwise pleasing session is a disconcerting funk/Latin beat, which lends an aura of sameness to every number that serves to weaken its purpose and impede efforts to separate it from the herd. That is countered to some extent by the ...

Album Review

Rich Willey: Laid Back Vol. 1, featuring John Swana

by Jack Bowers
June 13, 2026

Chicago-based trumpeter and composer Rich Willey oversees an impressive eleven-piece ensemble on Best Laid Plans, which embodies seven of his melodically enticing and rhythmically strong compositions, all neatly arranged by Wally Minko. The one clear drawback in this otherwise pleasing session, however, is an incessant rock beat, which lends an aura of sameness to every number that serves to weaken its purpose and impede even the most valiant efforts to separate it from the herd. That is countered ...

Album Review

Mike Freeman's ZonaVibe: Circles In A Yellow Room

Read "Circles In A Yellow Room" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
August 9, 2025

Circles in a Yellow Room, New York-based vibraphonist Mike Freeman's eighth recording as leader of his own ensembles, has a Latin flavor reminiscent of classic albums by West Coast maestro Cal Tjader. Stylistically, Freeman parallels Tjader and a host of others from Milt Jackson, Terry Gibbs and Gary McFarland to Bobby Hutcherson, Gary Burton, Joe Locke and Steve Nelson. Which is another way of saying that when it comes to the vibraphone, there is not much that separates the best ...

Album Review

Metropolitan Jazz Octet: The Bowie Project

Read "The Bowie Project" reviewed by Paul Reynolds

by Paul Reynolds
May 27, 2023

A tribute to a pop artist by jazz musicians--as with the new David Bowie album by Chicago's Metropolitan Jazz Octet--has to tread a careful line. It obviously won't--can't--be a rote reproduction of the originals, a flaw that sinks many pop-to-pop tributes. Yet it needs to translate the songs into jazz--its harmonic sophistication, especially--in a way that retains the essence of the artist being celebrated. The MJO effort deftly rises to that challenge. This 11-song project should intrigue Bowieists ...

Liner Notes

Josie Falbo: You Must Believe in Spring

by Howard Mandel
February 28, 2023

The first moments of Josie Falbo's You Must Believe in Spring sweep us into a lush soundscape, through a cinematic introduction, up close and intimately to her marvelous voice. Her voice is full, rich and pure top to bottom, fluid and shapely as anything imaginable, imparting true faith into lyrics valuing a lifetime's experience, acceptance, appreciation and hope. Josie Falbo gives voice to a heartening message, that like all 13 selections here issue sincerely from the glorious musical gifts she ...

Liner Notes

Metropolitan Jazz Octet featuring Paul Marinaro: The Bowie Project 

by Neil Tesser
February 10, 2023

In the words of David Bowie: “Changes." The Metropolitan Jazz Octet's two previous albums teem with unadulterated jazz. Paul Marinaro is a hard-swinging, expressive baritone steeped in the Great American Songbook and the jazz tradition. So what in the galaxy are they doing with the music of pop legend--and onetime glam rocker, dancehall king, visual visionary, music man of multiple personae, and cultural icon--David Bowie? Historians might note that Bowie started playing jazz saxophone in his ...

Album Review

Steve Million featuring Sarah Marie Young: Jazz Words

Read "Jazz Words" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci

by Richard J Salvucci
October 13, 2021

Evocative. Soulful. Regretful. Plaintive. But in no sense downbeat. Oddly edifying, joyful in places. Steve Million's compositions and Sarah Marie Young's voice were plainly intended to blend. And they do so in an emotionally stirring landscape of the heart which is powerfully affecting. You find yourself conjuring up quiet journeys, emotional and otherwise, from the past. Wintry, yes, but hopeful too. This is music of the heart, by and for the heart. Starting out with “Heavens to ...