Jazz Articles about Oscar Perez

About Oscar Perez

Album Review

Ted Chubb: Live at The Statuary

Read "Live at The Statuary" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
June 8, 2026

Trumpeter, composer and educator Ted Chubb leads a blue-chip quintet on Live at The Statuary, recorded during four concert sessions in March 2025 at the historic Jersey City, New Jersey, site that Chubb co-owns with his wife, Rachel Ryll. This is wall-to-wall hard bop jazz wherein Chubb and his front-line partner, alto saxophonist Bruce Williams, tread an undeviating straight-ahead path, one that their audience seems to appreciate. These concerts, however, are far more sedate than exciting, and represent ...

Album Review

Lakecia Benjamin: We Dream

Read "We Dream" reviewed by Andrew Schinder

by Andrew Schinder
May 29, 2026

In a genre full of peaceniks, Lakecia Benjamin is a killer. Benjamin, the alto saxophonist, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, has exploded over the course of the 2020's--both figuratively and musically. Her sound is brash and resonant, yet delicately composed and precisely structured. Benjamin is a focused musician, with all of her artistic choices brimming with intent, and the results are positively thrilling. She has become one of contemporary jazz's most popular and revered alto saxophonists, and she is just ...

Album Review

Lakecia Benjamin: We Dream

Read "We Dream" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
May 28, 2026

Lakecia Benjamin is clearly pulling no punches on We Dream. Not that she ever has, given a discography that includes 2020's Pursuance: The Coltranes (Ropeadope Records); 2012's intoxicating, groove-crazy Retox (Motema) or the spellbinding sister releases Phoenix (Whirlwind, 2023) and the super stoked Phoenix ReImagined (Live) (Ropeadope Records, 2024). We Dream drops the mic and leaves the rest up to the listener: What are you going to do to make the world a better place today? Excitable and ...

Album Review

Charlie Porter: Immigration Nation

Read "Immigration Nation" reviewed by Paul Rauch

by Paul Rauch
December 4, 2019

Jazz has always carried with it a social narrative with historical ebbs and flows reliant on the polarizing issues of its time. With Immigrant Nation (OA2, 2019), Portland based trumpeter Charlie Porter embraces the forever narrative of American immigration, the historical force of humanity that has formed and enriched this country from its beginnings. The linear timeline of American immigration that widened at the beginning of the twentieth century has narrowed due to the gut wrenching actions of the current ...

Album Review

Oscar Perez: Prepare A Place For Me

Read "Prepare A Place For Me" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
December 27, 2015

The heart of this album is found in pianist/composer Oscar Perez's trio with bassist Thomson Kneeland and drummer Alvester Garnett. Their four tracks showcase the cohesive sound they have developed together, Perez's elegant pianism matched by his empathetic partners. It's a modern piano trio, with a conversational style and all members contributing. There's enough trio music here to give a well-rounded picture of what they can do. “Just Everything" opens the set with a trio version ...

Album Review

Oscar Perez: Prepare A Place For Me

Read "Prepare A Place For Me" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
October 6, 2015

If Oscar Perez hadn't taken to the piano, he might've had a promising career in music journalism. In the concise and profound liner essay for this album, Perez intelligently considers the meaning of music, the struggles and joys connected to the art of creating and performing, and the way an individual's very being seeps into the sounds they make and vice versa. His carefully chosen words say far more than most, but he needn't have penned the essay at all ...

Album Review

Oscar Perez Nuevo Comienzo: Afropean Affair

Read "Afropean Affair" reviewed by AAJ Italy Staff

by AAJ Italy Staff
May 10, 2012

Oscar Perez attinge alle sue radici afro-cubane e alla passione per la musica classica per realizzare Afropean Affair dedicando un'attenzione particolare sia alle composizioni che agli arrangiamenti. Perez è Accompagnato dal suo “Nuevo Comienzo," formazione nata nel 2004 che racchiude musicisti di talento dell'area di New York con i quali ha maturato in questi anni un notevole affiatamento musicale. La scaletta si fa subito interessante; in “Canaria" i fiati si suddividono il tema, alternandosi a vicenda la melodia, fino all'apertura ...