Jazz Articles about Max Seigel

About Max Seigel

Album Review

Frank Carlberg Large Ensemble: Elegy for Thelonious

Read "Elegy for Thelonious" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
March 2, 2024

Pianist Frank Carlberg has been exploring the music of Thelonious Monk for some time, most specifically on his large group album, Monk Dreams, Hallucinations, and Nightmares, (Sunnyside, 2017). This new album has Carlberg returning to the large ensemble format for more Monk investigations, but this time approaching the work in a more splintered and abstract fashion. He does not simply interpret familiar Monk tunes. He writes compositions and arrangements which stitch Monk riffs and ideas into new fabrics, ...

Album Review

Frank Carlberg Large Ensemble: Elegy for Thelonious

Read "Elegy for Thelonious" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
February 21, 2024

There was a sardonic saying circulating a few years ago that observed, “It's Frank Sinatra's world, we just live in it." While that was a backhanded compliment, tailoring it to the subject of this large ensemble recording, we would call it a commendation. Pianist, composer, and conductor Frank Carlberg is telling us, “It's Thelonious Monk's world, and (thank god) we live in it." Carlberg has been a disciple of Monk for decades, recording his music in a piano trio format ...

Album Review

The Peter Leitch New Jazz Orchestra: New Life

by Jack Bowers
December 18, 2020

After what Canadian-born guitarist Peter Leitch has been through in the last eight years, it's little wonder he named the ensemble he now leads the New Life Jazz Orchestra. Diagnosed in 2012 with stage 4 lung cancer, Leitch faced the choice of throwing in the proverbial towel or undergoing career-ending cancer treatment. He chose the latter, reluctantly setting aside his instrument of choice and continuing his musical career as a composer, arranger and conductor of an orchestra whose library consists ...