Jazz Articles about Mark Ferber

About Mark Ferber

Album Review

Alex Goodman: Impressions in Blue and Red

Read "Impressions in Blue and Red" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
April 26, 2021

Con questo splendido doppio album, Alex Goodman esce dal limbo dei talentosi chitarristi emergenti per entrare a pieno titolo tra i solisti e compositori più interessanti del jazz contemporaneo. Era proprio ora. All'età di 34 anni, con sette dischi da leader e prestigiosi premi internazionali (tra cui la vittoria al Montreux International Jazz Guitar del 2014), il chitarrista e compositore canadese ottiene i meritati riconoscimenti della critica con un'opera particolarmente matura. Un concept album che vuol associare ...

Album Review

Jihye Lee: Daring Mind

Read "Daring Mind" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
March 31, 2021

Korean-born composer Jihye Lee is a musician who knows her own mind, whether it be relentless, unshakable, revived, dissatisfied or Daring, as on her second recording for Motema Records. In 2018, Lee earned the prestigious BMI Charlie Parker Composition Prize for “Unshakable Mind," one of nine diverse themes presented here. Another, “I Dare You," is loosely based on Wayne Shorter's response when asked, “What is jazz?" It is a question Lee must also address, as her music is not only ...

Album Review

Jihye Lee: Daring Mind

Read "Daring Mind" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
March 31, 2021

Solo un talento eccezionale come Jihye Lee poteva ottenere risultati così brillanti e personali nel campo dell'orchestrazione jazz partendo quasi da zero. Nata a Seoul ed emigrata negli Stati Uniti da adolescente, quando s'iscrisse al Berklee College conosceva pochissimo il linguaggio musicale afro-americano e per niente la sua dimensione orchestrale. Dopo un decennio, studi di perfezionamento alla Manhattan School of Music col grande Jim McNeely (a cui va riconosciuto parte del merito) e un primo eccellente debutto (April, 2017), la ...

Album Review

Jihye Lee Orchestra: Daring Mind

Read "Daring Mind" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
March 10, 2021

Listening to bandleader/composer Jihye Lee and her mic-drop orchestra is like watching your life flash before your eyes. You see it all: All the richness of spirit one can attain. All the sadness one can espouse. All the waltzing mischief to which one can aspire. Testing malleability at every turn, Lee's on to an eclectic something that doesn't pass through the torpor too often: A lucid, active imagination. Thus Daring Mind, Lee's Motema Music debut, co-produced by Darcy ...

Album Review

Anna Webber: Rectangles

Read "Rectangles" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
October 9, 2020

Canadian saxophonist Anna Webber's quartet provides a second winning entry in Out Of Your Head Records' digital Untamed series, following Nick Dunston's Atlantic Extraction: Live At Threes (2020). Webber calls the band Rectangles after a composition inspired by a sequence of 10-second videos on the YouTube test channel Webdriver Torso which consist of a string of high pitches coupled with images of red and blue rectangles flashing across the screen. If that premise sounds unpromising, the execution is anything but. ...

Album Review

Gabe Terracciano: In Flight

Read "In Flight" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
July 19, 2020

Comes a time when every fledgling must leave the nest. Since making his recorded debut on Ron McClure's Crunchtime (Steeplechase Records, 2012), Portland-born, New York-based Gabe Terracciano has worked in everything from the riotous jazz-filtered bluegrass of the Harmolodic String Band and the groundbreaking chamber iconoclasts Turtle Island Quartet, to the Ghanaian National Symphony Orchestra. With In Flight Terracciano takes the leap with his debut as leader. Heading a line-up of some of New York's finest, Terracciano introduces six original ...

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 ...