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Adam Schroeder & Mark Masters celebrate Clark Terry: CT!
by Pierre Giroux
In jazz, where the past intertwines with the present and the future, few figures were as influential as the legendary trumpeter Clark Terry. During his playing career, he developed a creative, bouncy style with an irrepressible rhythmic verve that was entirely his own. The album CT! with baritone saxophonist Adam Schroeder and arranger Mark Masters serves as a heartfelt homage to this jazz icon, presenting fresh and invigorating arrangements of 13 Clark Terry originals skillfully performed by a 12-piece ensemble. ...
read moreMark Masters: Masters & Baron Meet Blanton & Webster
by Jack Bowers
It is an absolute pleasure to hear several of Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn's classic charts for Ellington's celebrated 1940-42 Blanton-Webster orchestra (named for a pair of its stars, bassist Jimmy Blanton and tenor saxophonist Ben Webster) adeptly rescored for a twenty-first century ensemble by the superlative arranger Mark Masters. And to ice the cake, the Masters ensemble welcomes to its ranks Art Baron, the last trombonist hired by Ellington, who anchored the plunger chair from 1973 until Ellington's death ...
read moreMark Masters: Night Talk: The Alec Wilder Songbook
by Angelo Leonardi
Ringraziando il cielo nascono ancora dischi come questo. Opere che evocano gli anni cinquanta, quando il jazz rifletteva un mondo che guardava al futuro con speranza. Un disco retrò dunque? Solo se lo si guarda superficialmente. L'omaggio di Mark Masters al songbook di Alec Wilder con Gary Smulyan protagonista, non è esercizio stilistico o lavoro di routine ma un percorso fresco e smagliante, caratterizzato dalle dinamiche orchestrazioni di Masters e dai trascinanti interventi del sax baritono. Un'opera i cui i ...
read moreThe Mark Masters Ensemble: Night Talk: The Alec Wilder Songbook
by Pierre Giroux
Alec Wilder was born in 1907 and died in 1980, and might well have been described as an eccentric renaissance man. He composed opera, musicals, film music, popular songs, and chamber music, along with publishing in 1975 one of the most read books on popular music: American Popular Song: the Great Innovators 1900-1950. The Mark Masters Ensemble is a tight knit and imaginative Octet which can stake their claim on mining the gold contained in Alec Wilder's popular ...
read moreThe Mark Masters Ensemble: Night Talk: The Alec Wilder Songbook
by Jack Bowers
Night Talk, the eighth album by celebrated arranger Mark Masters' superb West Coast-based ensemble, is subtitled “The Alec Wilder Songbook Featuring Gary Smulyan." Indeed, Smulyan's is an impressive solo voice (but hardly the only one) in an eloquent songbook that appraises eight of Wilder's tasteful compositions, including a pair of his best-known melodies, “Moon and Sand" and “I'll Be Around." As Masters arranged every number for his hand-picked octet, nothing more need be said about that save ...
read moreMark Masters: Our Metier
by Angelo Leonardi
Splendido arrangiatore di scuola mainstream, Mark Masters guida formazioni orchestrali fin dai primi anni ottanta e gran parte della sua produzione discografica l'ha incisa per l'etichetta Capri di Thomas Burns. I suoi dischi recenti--compreso l'ultimo Blue Skylight -erano concept album dedicati a grandi nomi del jazz, come Clifford Brown, Duke Ellington, Lee Konitz o Charles Mingus ma in questo disco usa solo sue composizioni, eseguite da un singolare ensemble costituito da un sestetto di prestigiosi solisti e una ...
read moreMark Masters: Our Metier
by Jerome Wilson
There are a lot of fine composers writing for large jazz ensembles today, so many that some names can get lost in the shuffle. Mark Masters is a case in point. You don'r hear about him often, possibly because many of his recordings feature his ensembles playing the music of other composers like trombonist Grachan Moncur III, baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan and tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman. However the music on Our Metier all comes from Masters' own pen and it ...
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