Jazz Articles about Mike Rodriguez

About Mike Rodriguez

Album Review

Steven Feifke: The Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra

Read "The Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
May 10, 2023

Metti assieme un talentoso giovane orchestratore come Steven Feifke, un trombettista di prima grandezza come Bijon Watson e una big band con grandi nomi e prestigiosi ospiti e il risultato è scontato. Il debutto della Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra è stato propiziato dalla collaborazione col Jazz Education Network ed ha assunto le vesti di un album includendo in organico ospiti di rilievo come Kurt Elling, Sean Jones e Chad Lefkowitz Brown. Il principale riferimento è la tradizione ...

Album Review

Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra: The Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra

Read "The Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
September 12, 2022

The Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra, co-led by pianist/composer Steven Feifke and trumpeter par excellence Bijon Watson, is a seventeen-member ensemble comprising seasoned players paired with young lions who are poised to capture pride of place. Nowhere do the leaders say who is in which group, and it would be impolitic to name them here. Suffice to say that some of the names may be more familiar than others--as, for example, trombonist John Fedchock who cut his teeth with one of ...

Album Review

Remy Le Boeuf's Assembly of Shadows: Architecture of Storms

Read "Architecture of Storms" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
January 24, 2022

Remy Le Boeuf è uno dei nomi emergenti nell'ambito dell'arrangiamento e della conduzione orchestrale. Dopo il sorprendente Assembly of Shadows del 2019, il sassofonista e bandleader californiano (a New York dal 2004) torna con la sua orchestra irrobustita nel numero e nella qualità dei singoli componenti. Tra i nuovi ingressi troviamo in particolare il trombettista Mike Rodriguez e il sassofonista Dayna Stephens, che caratterizzano un paio di brani, anche se il lavoro di Le Boeuf è prettamente ...

Album Review

Maria Schneider Orchestra: Data Lords

Read "Data Lords" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
September 14, 2020

C'è molto da dire sul nuovo album di Maria Schneider ma la prima e più importante considerazione riguarda la musica: sorprendente per ricchezza e novità di soluzioni, tensione narrativa e sintesi tra ricerca e tradizione. È uno dei suoi dischi più avvincenti e innovativi. L'incubazione del progetto è durata alcuni anni (il precedente The Thompson Fields è del 2015) e si lega alla presa di coscienza della bandleader sui pericoli connessi alla raccolta dei dati personali dalle società dell'universo digitale. ...

Album Review

Maria Schneider: Data Lords

Read "Data Lords" reviewed by Pat Youngspiel

by Pat Youngspiel
September 12, 2020

Well someone doesn't seem too happy with the digital world. But that's nothing new for Maria Schneider. The Grammy-award winning composer and bandleader has been an outspoken critic of copyright abuses in the digital and streaming world of music for the biggest part of the last decade. On her newest effort, she sets her justified quarrels with the industry to music by juxtaposing the cold world of ones and zeroes, comprised on the first CD titled “The Digital World," in ...

Album Review

Maria Schneider Orchestra: Data Lords

Read "Data Lords" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
August 11, 2020

Composer Maria Schneider has long been writing and speaking about the dangers of the omnipresent digital universe, intellectual property theft, gathering and manipulation of personal data by big tech companies, the unchecked proliferation of false and misleading material, and so on. Those concerns form the basis of her latest musical project, Data Lords, a 2 CD set examining the conflicting realities of the digital and real worlds. The two CDs are labeled “The Digital World" and “Our Natural ...

Album Review

Maria Schneider: Data Lords

by Doug Hall
August 9, 2020

Maria Schneider, jazz pianist, orchestral composer and 2019 NEA Jazz Master, has just released a new double-album, Data Lords (artistShare, 2020), which creates poignant musical imagery about our data-driven world. Schneider, who has been an active advocate for musicians' rights and copyright, has followed-on this impact, citing “big data" companies as manipulators of music, culture and privacy. This collection of uniquely and emotionally rendered original compositions addresses the conflicting relationships between the digital and natural worlds, featuring Schneider's orchestra of ...