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Dave Stryker: Stryker with Strings Goes to the Movies
by Richard J Salvucci
If this recording were named “Dave Stryker Plays Bernard Hermann" (or Miklós Rózsa or Elmer Bernstein), well that would be just fine. They were all gifted composers who wrote film scores. The consensus would likely be that a musician like Stryker was hardly wasting his time, but Stryker With Strings Goes to the Movies hits the hopelessly middlebrow button. So how seriously anyone decides to take the results is anyone's guess. That would be a pity, ...
Continue ReadingBrent Laidler: Hidden Gems
by Jack Bowers
The Hidden Gems alluded to by guitarist Brent Laidler on his third recording as leader comprise unique and seductive melodies and chord changes he uncovered while taking time during the Covid pandemic to skim through and sight-read some 14,000 tunes in 'fake books' and on his laptop computer, most of which never made it past that platform, even though many were written by well-known jazz artists. In his sortie, Laidler writes that he “began to come across ...
Continue ReadingBrent Laidler: Hidden Gems
by Patrick Burnette
Guitarist Brent Laidler has released mainstream jazz albums infused with a cheerful attitude throughout his career. They tend to feature all original tunes, but unlike most jazz releases featuring (cursed with?) the All-Original Syndrome, his tunes are catchy, accessible, and sometimes even mood-enhancing. Given that hundreds--if not thousands--of small group jazz albums are released each year, it can be challenging to find a distinctive feature to hang onto when confronted with a new one. Laidler is canny enough to realize ...
Continue ReadingDave Stryker: Stryker with Strings Goes to the Movies
by Jack Bowers
Guitarist Dave Stryker, who is at home in any venue, Goes to the Movies on this ambitious album, wherein his working quartet is greeted by a thirty-piece orchestra with strings and four talented guest artists. There are some gems here--Henry Mancini's “Dreamsville," Rodgers and Hammerstein's “Edelweiss," Ennio Morricone's theme from Cinema Paradiso among them--and a few pleasant surprises as well. Songs in the latter group include “You Only Live Twice," from the James Bond film of that ...
Continue ReadingBuselli / Wallarab Jazz Orchestra: The Gennett Suite
by Dan McClenaghan
This is where music for mass consumption--recorded music--started, in Richmond, Indiana, in the 1920s, in a piano factory by the railroad tracks in a glacier-carved gorge. Established in 1887, in the beginning Starr Pianos' bread and butter was pianos, but they branched out to selling other instruments and eventually photographs and records--their own records, recorded in the piano factory, taking breaks in the process when a train came by. At first, they called their recording side of the business Starr ...
Continue ReadingBrent Laidler: Wouldn't Be Here Without You
by Richard J Salvucci
Stan Getz once said of the best bossa players that they could swing hard without appearing to try. It is also obvious that one of the few good things to come out of the Covid pandemic has been music intended to calm things down a bit. For example, John Pizzarelli's Better Days Ahead(Ghostlight Records, 2021), but there are others as well. If you take “swing" and “calm" and combine them, you end up with Brent Laidler's enjoyable and melliflous recording. ...
Continue ReadingBrent Laidler: Wouldn't Be Here Without You
by Patrick Burnette
As we slip deeper into the twenty-first century, jazz is a very broad church indeed, an umbrella term referring to dozens of sub-genres and styles. Even with all those tags and labels at our disposal, however, sometimes an album can be a little hard to pigeonhole. Guitarist/arranger/composer Brent Laidler's latest album, Wouldn't Be Here Without You, seems simple enough to categorize at first: it is straight-ahead, small combo mainstream jazz, right? But listen a while and you'll discover that the ...
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