Jazz Articles about Mike Caudill

About Mike Caudill

Album Review

Mike Caudill acquits himself well on his first trio recording as a leader, Caught at Dusk. The saxophone/bass/drums trio has been all but a rite of passage for young saxophonists ever since Sonny Rollins released his trio recordings, Way Out West (Contemporary Records,1957) and A Night at the Village Vanguard (Blue Note Records,1958). It is a tricky configuration, with no chordal instrument, like a piano or guitar, for support. That allows unprecedented freedom to play outside the chords, but requires ...

Album Review

Mike Thompson: 6th Avenue

Read "6th Avenue" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 30, 2025

Composer and arranger Mike Thompson was in his mid-twenties when 6th Avenue, his debut album as leader of a big band, was recorded (in the mid-2020s) at Q Division Studios in Cambridge, Massachusetts, enlisting for the most part veteran Boston-area musicians whom Thompson had met and befriended while studying at the Berklee School of Music, from which he was graduated in 2021. Although Thompson names Bob Brookmeyer, Maria Schneider and Igor Stravinsky as role models, you would be ...

Album Review

Felipe Salles: Home Is Here

Read "Home Is Here" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
October 26, 2023

Home Is Here conclude la trilogia del compositore e bandleader brasiliano Felipe Salles (residente dal 1995 negli USA dove insegna all'Università del Massachusetts Amherst) dedicata al tema dell'immigrazione. Un'indagine musicale e multimediale iniziata nel 2018 con The Lullaby Project e proseguita due anni dopo con The New Immigrant Experience, di cui abbiamo già parlato in queste pagine. Qui Salles focalizza il tema dell'immigrazione nel jazz ed ha invitato otto protagonisti della scena di New York ad esibirsi col ...

Album Review

Felipe Salles Interconnections Ensemble: Home is Here

Read "Home is Here" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
May 11, 2023

For the third recording from his Interconnections Ensemble, tenor saxophonist and composer Felipe Salles chose to put the artists first--literally. That is, he had extensive conversations with each of the guest musicians on the record before composing the pieces on which each would be featured, thus highlighting their own stylistic and personal characteristics. The result is a polychromatic, adventurous album that allows Salles' multidimensionality as a composer to flourish. And with top-shelf guests such as Melissa Aldana, Paquito D'Rivera, and ...

Album Review

Felipe Salles: The New Immigrant Experience

Read "The New Immigrant Experience" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
May 21, 2021

The New Immigrant Experience è un lavoro multimediale, che combina musica orchestrale e proiezioni video, ispirato all'esperienza dei Dreamers, persone protette dal programma Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Accanto al compact disc musicale il progetto include quindi un DVD (curato dalla regista Fernanda Faya) in cui Felipe Salles intervista giovani immigrati, raccogliendo storie di vita spesso dolorose. Quelle testimonianze sono servite al bandleader da ispirazione per questo nuovo lavoro col Felipe Salles Interconnections Ensemble, una big band di 20 elementi ...

Album Review

Felipe Salles Interconnections Ensemble: The New Immigrant Experience

Read "The New Immigrant Experience" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 3, 2020

Is it mere coincidence, or does the rise in the number of “concept" albums by jazz big bands signal that the trend is here to stay? Trumpeter Brian Lynch won a 2020 Grammy Award for his Journey Through Literature in Music, and there have been other tenet-based enterprises within the past year by Dan Jonas, John Bailey, Eric Weiss, the WDR Big Band, Marcus Shelby, the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, Chris Jentsch and others. Now comes The New Immigrant Experience, ...