Jazz Articles about Rafael Rosa

About Rafael Rosa

Album Review

Ben Rosenblum: The Longest Way Round

Read "The Longest Way Round" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
March 19, 2026

The Longest Way Round, New York City-based pianist, accordionist and composer Ben Rosenblum and his cutting-edge Nebula Project take listeners on a wild and exhilarating ride across musical boundaries, through multiple genres and around customary intersections to a destination that is as fresh and pleasing as it is creative and unique. While contemporary jazz remains the core element, this is music whose broad framework flows beyond the confines of normal depiction to encompass a harmonic and rhythmic panorama ...

Album Review

Ben Rosenblum: The Longest Way Round

by Jack Bowers
March 12, 2026

On The Longest Way Round, New York City-based pianist and composer Ben Rosenblum and his cutting-edge Nebula Project take listeners on a wild and exhilarating ride across musical boundaries, through multiple genres and around customary interactions to a destination that is as fresh and pleasing as it is creative and unique. While contemporary jazz remains the core element, this is music whose broad framework flows beyond the confines of normal depiction to encompass a harmonic and rhythmic panorama ...

Album Review

Ben Rosenblum Nebula Project: A Thousand Pebbles

Read "A Thousand Pebbles" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
May 11, 2023

Ben Rosenblum's Nebula Project is a group which incorporates sounds from all over the world. Gospel, Brazilian rhythms, European folk dances, and other kinds of music all mix freely with jazz in this exciting and unpredictable set. The horn players, trumpeter Wayne Tucker and reed players Jasper Dutz and Xavier Del Castillo, all do excellent work in realizing the leader's freewheeling concepts. “Bulgares" has Tucker's trumpet and Dutz's bass clarinet darting out in a whirling Bulgarian rhythm over ...

Album Review

Ben Rosenblum Nebula Project: A Thousand Pebbles

Read "A Thousand Pebbles" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
March 26, 2023

This is music for the open-minded. On A Thousand Pebbles, his fourth album as leader, New York-based pianist & accordionist Ben Rosenblum's seven-member Nebula Project traverses a number of musical landscapes, from Bulgaria to Brazil, Ireland to Israel, and realms beyond, offering a pleasurable smorgasbord of contemporary jazz that is always engaging and never shopworn. Rosenblum the composer wrote all of the album's eleven numbers save one, Antonio Carlos Jobim & Chico Baurque's melodious “Song of the ...

Album Review

Ben Rosenblum Nebula Project: A Thousand Pebbles

Read "A Thousand Pebbles" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro

by Alberto Bazzurro
March 7, 2023

Il giovane pianista e fisarmonicista (qui più la seconda della prima pelle, diremmo, almeno come incidenza sul sound d'insieme) newyorchese Ben Rosenblum firma con questo A Thousand Pebbles il quarto album a suo nome e il secondo alla testa del Nebula Project, sestetto (qui rinforzato da Xavier Del Castillo) versatile e capace di generare un clima solare e spesso festoso, intriso di umori latini e comunque popolari in senso lato (Rosenblum, che non di rado si sovrappone su entrambi i ...

Album Review

Ben Rosenblum Nebula Project: Kites and Strings

Read "Kites and Strings" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro

by Alberto Bazzurro
March 25, 2021

Si parte con un episodio che potremmo definire post-bop, “Cedar Place," uno dei sette a firma di Ben Rosenblum, integrati da “Somewhere" di Leonard Bernstein, “Philadelphia" di Neil Young e un tradizionale bulgaro, ma in fondo è una falsa rivelazione, perché a seguire questa che è l'opera prima del giovane pianista e fisarmonicista newyorchese si sdipana su toni decisamente variegati, in cui il grande ceppo jazzistico è certo perfettamente avvertibile, ma i vari episodi sono più compositi, qua e là ...

Album Review

Ben Rosenblum Nebula Project: Kites and Strings

Read "Kites and Strings" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
January 17, 2021

Ben Rosenblum uses a lot of different instrumental elements on this release. For starters, he himself plays both piano and accordion, and his sextet also features trumpet, reeds and guitar. In addition, vibraphone and trombone show up on some tracks. That creates a blend of various textures and sounds which bring variety to this program of bright jazz compositions. Rosenblum's accordion flows together nicely with the sounds of Wayne Tucker's trumpet, and Jasper Dutz's bass clarinet on the ...