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Wycliffe Gordon: Holiday Fun!
by Jack Bowers
Trombonist Wycliffe Gordon takes listeners on a pleasurable trip to his childhood and invites them to summon their own precious memories of Holiday Fun! on this splendid new seasonal recording from Arbors Jazz. Gordon has enlisted an all-star ensemble of like-minded musicians and friends to heighten the fun, stepping merrily through a litany of holiday favorites from “Winter Wonderland" to “Frosty the Snowman," “Silent Night" to “Joy to the World," before closing with the venerable “Auld Lang ...
Continue ReadingMike Fahie Jazz Orchestra: Urban(e)
by Dan Bilawsky
There's a rocky history surrounding jazz-classical hybrids. But, in truth, that has little to do with any potential incompatibility. Instead, it's usually misguided maneuvering and/or an excessive show of dominant traits from one side or the other that mars said unions. When done right a wedding of those worlds can truly birth brilliance. Just listen to Urban(e) for proof. Noted trombonist, composer, arranger and educator Mike Fahie's unabashed love for classical music and jazz is clear and ...
Continue ReadingMike Fahie Jazz Orchestra: Urban(e)
by Jack Bowers
Most Western music, irrespective of its origin and premise, inhabits the same harmonic, chordal and rhythmic universe. So it should not be surprising that classical music, in the hands of a skilled arranger, can be readily recast in a jazz idiom, even one that is housed within a big-band framework. On Urban(e), trombonist Mike Fahie's New York-based Jazz Orchestra braves that challenge, quickening Fahie's translations of works by Frederic Chopin, Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, Bela Bartok, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky and ...
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