Jazz Articles about Pete McGuinness

The Pete McGuinness Jazz Orchestra: First Flight

by Jerry D'Souza
August 23, 2007

Pete McGuinness has been leading his own groups since the 1990s, but the closest he came to helming a big band was as co-leader of The Newyorkestra. He changed the pattern in September 2006 when he formed the Pete McGuinness Jazz Orchestra which, later that year, he took into the recording studio.

McGuinness shows his multiple talents on the resulting CD. He has written six of the nine compositions, all of the arrangements, sings on two and plays ...

Pete McGuinness Jazz Orchestra: First Flight

by Dan McClenaghan
August 13, 2007

Trombonist/composer/arranger Pete McGuinness has twenty years on the New York jazz scene under his belt, playing with the Woody Herman Big Band (directed by Frank Tibieri) and the Maria Schneider Orchestra, alongside studies with trombonist Bob Brookmeyer and Manny Album. So it's no surprise that his first recording leading his Pete McGuinness Jazz Orchestra, First Flight, soars and swings with the best of them.Like all of the best large ensemble leaders, McGuinness showcases the talents of his band ...

The Pete McGuinness Jazz Orchestra: First Flight

by Jack Bowers
June 23, 2007

On the aptly named First Flight, the inaugural recording as leader of his own big band, Pete McGuinness does almost everything except drive the band bus and clean up the studio afterward--and I wouldn't doubt that he did that as well.

McGuinness wrote six of the album's nine tunes, arranged them all, crafts likable trombone solos on three numbers, and sings on two more--Charlie Chaplin's “Smile and his urbane finale, “A Fond Farewell. Happily, he does everything well, and is ...

Mike Holober and the Gotham Jazz Orchestra: Thought Trains

by Robert R. Calder
March 23, 2005

Mike Holober's not just another pianist working within long-established post-Bill Evans methods, he's one of the rare very individually creative ones. Given his more monumental approach, his Gotham Jazz Orchestra can seem something of an extension of his piano work. His orchestration sometimes fills out a piano conception, sometimes interacts with his playing, piano concerto fashion. A band member's solo will sometimes have the full orchestra, sometimes the at times equally full-sounding rhythm section, in accompaniment. Planned and grand. With ...

Mike Holober and the Gotham Jazz Orchestra: Thought Trains

by John Kelman
October 23, 2004

Originally recorded in '96, years before Mike Holober's début small group recording Canyon (Sons of Sound, '03), Thought Trains is only now seeing the light of day, but it continues to assert the pianist/composer/arranger as a dominant new force on the New York scene. And while the larger ensemble context of Thought Trains limits the amount of spontaneous interplay that was prevalent on Canyon , it makes up for that kind of unrestrained exploration with sharp arrangements that make full ...

Mike Holober and the Gotham Jazz Orchestra: Thought Trains

by Dan McClenaghan
October 16, 2004

There's something about trains, the metronomic, ringing clink-clack of metal wheels on metal track, the fanfare of the whistle, the rhythm and rumble of the coaches being propelled across a countryside. Duke Ellington loved trains, in a day when he and the band used the form of transportion to get from gig to gig. Think of “Take the A Train" and “Track 360." Pianist/arranger/composer Mike Holober loves trains, too, as his second outing as leader attests--the big band set Thought ...

The Mike Kaplan Nonet: How's That?

by Jack Bowers
July 25, 2003

Saxophonist Mike Kaplan and his New York City-based nonet play contemporary jazz; that is to say, jazz that is emphatically modern but neither purposely bland nor maddeningly incomprehensible.Kaplan’s debut album contains a number of tasty musical surprises, and it's one of only a handful to leave me wishing the leader had soloed more often (Kaplan does so at length only on his entrancing “Melody for My Mom”). Even so, his fingerprints are conspicuous throughout, as Kaplan wrote five ...