Jazz Articles about Paloma Ximena

About Paloma Ximena

Album Review

Michael Dease Big Band: Return Trajectory

Read "Return Trajectory" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
July 3, 2026

While it is not true that a photo of Michael Dease appears in Webster's dictionary next to the word “versatile," the metaphor does not seem too far-fetched once one considers the many tasks Dease carries out on his latest recording, Return Trajectory. Not only does Dease lead his big band, he wrote three of the album's half-dozen themes, solos on trombone on four, baritone sax on the other two (unaccompanied on his composition “Up South"). Rumor has it that he ...

Rising Stars

Introducing Saxophonist Paloma Ximena

by Sanford Josephson
May 1, 2026

In May 2022, Rio Americano High School in Sacramento, CA, was a finalist in Jazz at Lincoln Center's Essentially Ellington competition, and sophomore Paloma Ximena won two solo awards: Outstanding Clarinetist and Outstanding Alto Saxophonist. “That was really the start of my career," she said. “That was the moment when I really decided to pursue music." During the fall of 2021, Ximena was playing competitive soccer as a goalie and “trying to go to college for soccer. But ...

Album Review

NYO Jazz: Live in Johannesburg

Read "Live in Johannesburg" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
June 5, 2025

In the summer of 2024, trumpeter/music director Sean Jones and Carnegie Hall's prodigious NYO (National Youth Orchestra) packed their bags and headed overseas for a tour of South Africa, pausing at one of that country's historic landmarks, the Market Theatre, on July 26-28 to present three days of impressive concert performances that thankfully were taped and preserved on this marvelous two-disc compilation, Live in Johannesburg. If these twenty-two young musicians represent any sort of barometer, the future ...