Jazz Articles about Marcus Rojas

About Marcus Rojas

Album Review

Ryan Truesdell: Shades of Sound

Read "Shades of Sound" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
June 2, 2025

Shades of Sound costituisce il secondo volume del Gil Evans Project di Ryan Truesdell, inciso dal vivo al Jazz Standard di New York. Data d'incisione e organico sono gli stessi di Lines of Color, il primo volume registrato dal 13 al 18 maggio 2014 con una formazione di 23 musicisti più il leader, scelti tra i solisti più brillanti di New York: i sassofonisti Donny McCaslin, Dave Pietro, Steve Wilson, i trombettisti Mat Jodrell e Greg Gisbert, i trombonisti Ryan ...

Album Review

Ryan Truesdell / Gil Evans Project: Shades Of Sound

Read "Shades Of Sound" reviewed by Jack Kenny

by Jack Kenny
May 30, 2025

Shades of Sound is not about Ryan Truesdell recreating the past. There are excellent reasons to listen to recreations of the music of Gil Evans. As critic Bill Mathieu wrote of Evans, “The mind reels at the intricacy of his orchestral and developmental techniques. His scores are so careful, so formally well-constructed, so mindful of tradition that you feel the originals should be preserved under glass in a Florentine museum" (Mathieu in Max Harrison, Jazz Profiles, 2011). Evans ...

Album Review

Ryan Truesdell: Shades Of Sound

Read "Shades Of Sound" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
May 22, 2025

Ryan Truesdell's Shades of Sounds: Gil Evans Project Live at Jazz Standard Vol. 2 is a triumphant continuation of his lovingly curated Gil Evans Project--a musical venture focusing on both preservation and revelation. With this latest volume, Truesdell guides us through Evans' well-known sonic landscape and deeper into the vaults, unearthing four never-before-recorded arrangements that offer a renewed understanding of the composer's nuanced brilliance. Truesdell's decision to record live at Jazz Standard is both philosophical and ...

Liner Notes

Marshall Gilkes: Cyclic Journey

by Dan Bilawsky
March 5, 2023

Wonders never cease with Marshall Gilkes. Having previously reached extraordinary heights as a leader on a breakout quartet set, two standout quintet dates, a pair of essential releases with the WDR Big Band and one stunning trio album, this celebrated trombonist and composer now moves beyond known borders. Directing and fronting a sui generis assemblage merging a top-shelf rhythm combo with a brilliant brass ensemble, he uncovers and explores the conventions of his own cyclic journey. “I wrote the music ...

Album Review

Michael Blake: Combobulate

Read "Combobulate" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
November 5, 2022

The instrumentation alone promises something out of the ordinary. Saxophone, two tubas, trumpet, trombone, drums. Then there are the musicians, luminaries of downtown New York jazz. Michael Blake, Bob Stewart, Marcus Rojas, Steven Bernstein, Clark Gayton, Allan Mednard. And within seconds of the needle descending on track one, side one, Combobulate starts delivering on the promise. The album is one of four marking the return of audiophile-vinyl label Newvelle after a two-year hiatus. The approximate meaning of its ...

Album Review

John Ellis, Andy Bragen: The Ice Siren

Read "The Ice Siren" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
June 23, 2022

Dopo Dreamscapes e MOBRO John Ellis e Andy Bragen firmano un altro lavoro d'ampio respiro, che si snoda in equilibrio tra scrittura cameristica, jazz e opera contemporanea. Ellis ha scritto la musica e partecipa come strumentista; Bragen ha composto il libretto, ispirandosi al filone gothic fantasy di autori come Tim Burton ne “La sposa cadavere" (titolo originale The Corpse Bride). L'opera è stata commissionata dalla Jazz Gallery di New York e presentata lo scorso anno durante ...

Album Review

Charles Pillow Ensemble: Chamber Jazz

Read "Chamber Jazz" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 29, 2020

Chamber Jazz, alto saxophonist Charles Pillow's eighth recording as leader of his ensemble, is a generally sedate but remarkably engaging series of tone poems that combine contemporary jazz with elements of classical music to produce a hybrid that underlines what is most harmonious and charming in each genre. Chamber Jazz is what it says, and chamber jazz is what it is. For comparison's sake, think of the ensemble as the Modern Jazz Quartet times five. True, there is no John ...