Jazz Articles about Mark O'Connor

About Mark O'Connor

Album Review

Sean Imboden Large Ensemble: Communal Heart

Read "Communal Heart" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
June 17, 2026

Communal Heart is the first album by saxophonist and composer Sean Imboden's superb Indiana-based Large Ensemble, recorded about a year before his second recording, Uncharted Realms (Self Produced, 2026). As before, all the compositions and arrangements are Imboden's, while the personnel in the eighteen-member orchestra remains virtually intact. If there is a difference between the two, it is that Imboden's themes are even more intriguing and intense the first time around, which is saying a lot, as Uncharted ...

Album Review

Sean Imboden: Communal Heart

Read "Communal Heart" reviewed by Dean Nardi

by Dean Nardi
June 8, 2025

Sean Imboden's Large Ensemble Has a Communal Heart Sean Imboden was bitten by the big band bug early on. It is understandable. Both his parents were musicians, and his father taught him to play clarinet when he was in sixth grade. As a teenager, besides playing in middle school and high school bands, he sometimes sat in on gigs with his father's ensemble. After college, he moved to New York City and became involved with the touring Broadway show circuit, ...

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Album Review

Mark O'Connor's Hot Swing Trio: Live in New York

Read "Live in New York" reviewed by Matt Cibula

by Matt Cibula
December 4, 2005

Damn, these bastards can play. Mark O'Connor, who was playing duets onstage with Stephane Grappelli every night when he was seventeen years old, has a truly formidable range of skills on jazz violin. He has assembled a crack band--Frank Vignola is mercurial and scary-fast on guitar, Jon Burr is everywhere he needs to be on bass. This live set from Merkin Hall, recorded in September 2004, is a very pretty document of what three people who are on the same ...