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Peter Erskine: Vienna to Hollywood: Impressions of E.W. Korngold & Max Steiner
by Jack Bowers
From Vienna to Hollywood is versatile drummer Peter Erskine's ardent homage to the (mostly) film music of the renowned Academy Award-winning Viennese composers Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Max Steiner, who wrote some of filmdom's most memorable themes during Hollywood's Golden Age in the decades from 1930 to 1960. To transpose their film scores to the jazz genre, Erskine uses a talented group of performers from Vienna's JAM Music Lab University (where he serves as artist-in-residence), supplanted on two numbers by ...
Continue ReadingPeter Erskine & The JAM Music Lab All-Stars: Vienna to Hollywood
by Peter Erskine
Hollywood called... ...and Max Steiner was the first of this dynamic duo to answer, arriving there in 1929, initially working for the RKO Studios as an orchestrator and then as a composer. This was not his first affiliation with Hollywood, however; he functioned as Fox Studio's musical director, adding live music to silent films presented in New York theaters where he had already established himself on Broadway. The call to come west must have triggered an urge as primal as ...
Continue ReadingARC Trio and the John Daversa Big Band: ARCeology: The Music of MSM Schmidt
by Jim Worsley
What would happen if fusion, already a hybrid of musical genres, was compounded with the sound of big-band? Further, that both genres were stretched well outside the box? An ensemble of bright musical minds came together on just such a project. The results could have been the disastrous soup of too many cooks in the kitchen or, perhaps, something special and creative. Fortunately, they served up an entree which is very much the latter. It starts with quality ...
Continue ReadingJimmy Haslip/Scott Kinsey/Gergo Borlai: ARC Trio
by Jim Worsley
A distant relative of Jimmy Haslip's first record as a leader, Arc (GRP, 1993), Arc Trio is a breath of fresh air. The core trio of Haslip, Scott Kinsey, and Gergo Borlai intelligently reimagine the fusion genre. While embracing essential elements of fusion past, they bring an enlightened vision to the epicenter as well as a broad spectrum of well-rooted branches. Each song feeds seamlessly into the next in a presentation that is intended to be captured in its entirety. ...
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