Jazz Articles about Phil Norman

About Phil Norman

Album Review

The Phil Norman Tentet: Then and Now

Read "Then and Now" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
July 28, 2017

There comes a time, usually during the fifth or sixth rendition of a “franchise" movie (think “Rocky" or “Star Trek"), when the phrase “enough is enough" inevitably springs to mind. While Then and Now, the seventh album by saxophonist Phil Norman's L.A.-based all-star Tentet, lands somewhere this side of overkill, its premise--to update and reintroduce classic themes from the jazz scene's illustrious past--is a tad shopworn, and serves for the most part to remind inveterate listeners that the original versions, ...

Album Review

The Phil Norman Tentet: Encore

Read "Encore" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
January 7, 2012

Harkening back and reverently genuflecting to the mid-size ensemble format of the 1950s and '60s--especially those on the West Coast such as the Dave Pell Octet, Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool (Capitol 1957) band and other similar-sized ensembles-- the Phil Norman Tentet's Encore delivers the absolute best of all jazz worlds. This is an aggregation and performance that, regardless of size, has everything, including some of jazz's finest players, composers and arrangers, all combining to deliver ...