Jazz Articles about Kyle Swan

About Kyle Swan

Album Review

Ben Markley Big Band: Tuesday Morning Feeling

Read "Tuesday Morning Feeling" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 24, 2026

When a bandleader says he plans to rely less on arranging the music of others to focus more on his own compositions and charts, the usual response is a prolonged sigh or indifferent shrug of the shoulders --which makes it all the more remarkable that when pianist and composer Ben Markley did exactly that on Tuesday Morning Blues, the third recording by the Colorado-based Ben Markley Big Band, the finished product demands not a sigh or shrug but a straight-from-the-heart ...

Album Review

Jared Hall: Hometown

by Jack Bowers
April 30, 2026

The Hometown in question is Spokane, Washington, where trumpeter and composer Jared Hall was born and raised. On his third album for Origin Records, Hall salutes the hometown to which he has returned after years as a touring musician with a splendid series of his original compositions and new readings of others by Bobby Hutcherson and Thelonious Monk. To help carry out his plan, Hall enlisted the services of four stellar sidemen: tenor saxophonist Troy Roberts, pianist Ben ...

Album Review

Brian Lynch, featuring Charles McPherson: Torch Bearers

Read "Torch Bearers" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 13, 2026

Trumpeter Brian Lynch, who has been at the top of his game for more than three decades, shares the stage with another seasoned maestro, alto saxophonist Charles McPherson, on Torch Bearers, wherein Lynch, McPherson and their able companions not only carry the torch for their generation but offer an upcoming legion of eager young musicians a candid lesson in jazz/bop milieu and design and how best to properly safeguard those standards. They do this without pretense or embellishment, simply by ...

Album Review

Ben Markley: Tell the Truth

Read "Tell the Truth" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
March 29, 2025

Ben Markley, who has already earned wide praise as a pianist, educator and leader of the Ben Markley Big Band, brandishes his sturdy composing and arranging chops on Tell the Truth, wherein he leads an able-bodied Colorado-based quintet through its paces on eight of his typically melodious and sunlit original compositions. According to Markley, the pieces were written to parallel the classic 1960s Blue Note quintet recordings, with guitarist Steve Kovalcheck replacing the customary trumpet lead and ...

Album Review

Brian Lynch: 7X7BY7

by Jack Bowers
December 13, 2024

The number seven, which for reasons shrouded in mystery, has long been considered a symbol of good luck, lies at the core of trumpeter Brian Lynch's latest album, 7X7BY7, which consists of seven themes performed by seven musicians with each number clocking in at precisely six seconds past seven minutes. Furthermore, it is said, “the...process [of creating the album] was designed to facilitate the smooth reassembly of elements...into new pieces. Shaped by these attributes along with their constraints, the music ...