Jazz Articles about Jim Hopson

About Jim Hopson

Album Review

Vancouver Jazz Orchestra: Vancouver Jazz Orchestra Meets Brian Charette

Read "Vancouver Jazz Orchestra Meets Brian Charette" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
January 21, 2026

The Vancouver Jazz Orchestra's debut album arrives with a sense of purpose that feels both timely and reassuringly traditional. Formed to showcase the city's rich pool of jazz musicians while creating a platform for composers and arrangers, the VJO proves itself not through rhetoric but through sound. This release features a confident, well-rehearsed ensemble playing music almost exclusively by Vancouver writers, united here by the invigorating presence of Hammond B3 master Brian Charette. Steve Kaldestad's “Equestrian Interlude" opens ...

Album Review

Vancouver Jazz Orchestra: Meets Brian Charette

Read "Meets Brian Charette" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
January 17, 2026

Through the years, Canada has produced an impressive number of world-renowned big bands including Rob McConnell's peerless Boss Brass, the Toronto and Winnipeg Jazz Orchestras, those led by trombonist Dave McMurdo, pianist Jill Townsend and trumpeter Steve McDade, and one of the world's foremost undergraduate bands, Montreal's McGill University Jazz Ensemble. On its debut recording, Meets Brian Charette, the Vancouver Jazz Orchestra proves beyond any doubt that it deserves inclusion in that special fraternity. Simply put, the VJO ...

Album Review

Cory Weeds: Home Cookin'

Read "Home Cookin'" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
January 17, 2024

On Home Cookin', his second recording with an eleven-piece “little big band," tenor saxophonist Cory Weeds is doing the best he can. Really. As Weeds writes in the liner notes, the plan was to rehearse the band for two nights at Frankie's Jazz Club in Vancouver, Canada, home to Weeds and most of the band's personnel, then to convene at the Warehouse Studio on Sunday to record. Arriving at the club on Friday evening, Weeds found to his dismay that ...

Album Review

Cory Weeds: Home Cookin'

Read "Home Cookin'" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
November 26, 2023

Cory Weeds, a prominent figure in the contemporary jazz scene, has made a remarkable statement with his Little Big Band's latest album Home Cookin'. The session showcases a vibrant collection of compositions/arrangements carefully curated to resonate with his personal journey, including those by Horace Silver, Thad Jones and Oliver Nelson, which are essential to him for a variety of reasons. The band comprises ten of his favorite world-class Vancouver, BC-based musicians. These previously mentioned influential tracks ...

Album Review

Daniel Hersog Jazz Orchestra: Open Spaces

Read "Open Spaces" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
September 23, 2023

The subtitle of this album is “Folk Songs Reimagined" and Daniel Hersog uses a very liberal meaning for the term “folk song" here. He includes traditional folk songs on this album, in addition to familiar tunes by Bob Dylan and Gordon Lightfoot and his own folk-based compositions. All are given a glistening polish in the sweeping cinematic arrangements which he writes for his orchestra, and are further enhanced by excellent solo work from a number of musicians. Hersog's ...

Album Review

Daniel Hersog: Open Spaces

Read "Open Spaces" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
September 4, 2023

Locked down and socially distanced during the pandemic, composer-arranger Daniel Hersog had an interesting idea: rearrange some well-known and well-loved folk songs, most with Canadian roots, for jazz orchestra and throw in a handful of his own original compositions with a folk-tune ambience. The result is Open Spaces: Folk Songs Reimagined, the sophomore album by Hersog's Vancouver-based ensemble. As on his debut recording, Night Devoid of Stars (Cellar Music, 2020), Hersog welcomes a number of talented guest ...

Album Review

Daniel Hersog Jazz Orchestra: Night Devoid of Stars

Read "Night Devoid of Stars" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
July 11, 2020

Daniel Hersog is a Canadian trumpet player and composer, here presenting his first big band album, a set of sweeping and progressive orchestral jazz which reflects the current state of the world with shifting moods of unease and cautious optimism. Hersog has a expansive style of writing that draws as much from classical music as jazz. His compositions here are written to feature two main soloists, tenor saxophonist Noah Preminger and pianist Frank Carlberg, much as Gil Evans ...