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John Daversa Jazz Orchestra Featuring Justin Morell: All Without Words: Variations Inspired by Loren
by Dan McClenaghan
Trumpeter John Daversa takes the biggest artistic challenge of his career with All Without Words: Variations Inspired by Loren. It is a large scale orchestral piece--a “jazz with strings" affair if it needs a label--that goes well its seminal predecessors in the style, to wit a pair of Charlie Parker With Strings albums (both bearing the same title), initially released on EmArcy, and reissued together later on a CD compilation (plus extra tracks) in 1995 on Verve; and trumpeter Clifford ...
Continue ReadingSouth Florida Jazz Orchestra: Cheap Thrills: The Music Of Rick Margitza
by Jack Bowers
In 2019, the acclaimed Michigan-bred, Paris-based tenor saxophonist Rick Margitza thought he was being asked to contribute a couple of charts to the University of South Florida Jazz Orchestra's fifth recording in its fifteen-year history as a working ensemble. But when SFJO founder and leader Chuck Bergeron looked at the charts he had an even better idea, and asked Margitza to write and / or arrange everything on the album, which thus became Cheap Thrills: The Music of Rick Margitza. ...
Continue ReadingSouth Florida Jazz Orchestra: Cheap Thrills: The Music Of Rick Margitza
by Pierre Giroux
The concept of a large, tightly-knit big band in a recording studio, on a concert or jazz club stage may just be a plug-in memory in today's environment. Fortunately there is the fifteenth anniversary recording of The South Florida Jazz Orchestra directed by bassist/bandleader Chuck Bergeron, entitled Cheap Thrills: The Music Of Rick Margitza, to remind us what a disciplined inventive big band sounds like. With the exception of George and Ira Gershwin's “Embraceable You," all the other ...
Continue ReadingJohn Daversa: Wobbly Dance Flower
by Jerome Wilson
"Wobbly Dance Flower" is the title of one of the tracks on this CD but it also captures the frisky, goofy vibe of the entire disc. Trumpeter John Daversa writes sophisticated music with catchy melodies that share the off-beat, slightly wacky humor of musicians like Matt Wilson and Jack Walrath. The sounds and approaches on Wobbly Dance Flower change constantly, sometimes within the same composition. The opening “Ms. Turkey" has a super-fast stop-start boppish melody powered by Joe ...
Continue ReadingJohn Daversa: Wobbly Dance Flower
by Mike Jurkovic
As trumpeter John Daversa explains simply in the liners, Wobbly Dance Flower boils down to having fun. And glory be does he hit it squarely out of the park. Here's an upper deck moon shot so uplifting, so tightly nuanced and choreographed with shifts of meter, attitude, altitude, and an irresistible swing guaranteed to shake you from the apocalyptic feel that seems to have engulfed most of us.An explosive burst of sound and color, the eight snappy and ...
Continue ReadingLos Angeles Jazz Institute Festival "Big Band Spectacular" 2017, Part 1-4
by Simon Pilbrow
Los Angeles Jazz Institute Festival Big Band Spectacular LAX Westin Hotel Los Angeles, CA May 24-28, 2017 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 Organised by Ken Poston, head of the Los Angeles Jazz Institute (LAJI), and advertised as the “Largest Big Band Festival of all time!," this was a fine exposition of many of the best big bands from the greater Los Angeles area and ...
Continue ReadingJohn Daversa: Kaleidoscope Eyes: Music of the Beatles
by Karl Ackermann
Does the world need another collection of Beatles covers? The same argument could be had about any of the dozens of standards that regularly, sometimes ad nauseam, crop up on new releases. But redundancy is validated each time an Amy Winehouse takes on “Body and Soul" or Avicii reinvents “Feeling Good," and those instances serve as wakeup calls to re-appreciate the originals. There should be little doubt that the works of John Lennon and Paul McCartney--and occasionally George Harrison--need to ...
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