Jazz Articles about Rafi Malkiel

About Rafi Malkiel

Album Review

Rachel Therrien is a Canadian composer and trumpet player who has been around for some time, though her name may be unfamiliar. Therrien's musical journey has taken her from Rimouski, Quebec to Havana, Cuba via New York City and Colombia. Her Latin Jazz Project is nothing if not arresting, and probably merits a name like avant-garde Latin jazz, although labels inevitably just confuse matters. Listen very carefully, because if Jerry Gonzalez, Freddie Hubbard and Chicago all seem to stroll through ...

Album Review

Arturo O'Farrill & The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra: Mundoagua: Celebrating Carla Bley

Read "Mundoagua: Celebrating Carla Bley" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
March 17, 2025

Scoperto da Carla Bley nel 1979, quand'era ancora studente diciannovenne, e rimasto nei suoi gruppi per tre anni, Arturo O'Farrill ne celebra la memoria con quest'album ambizioso, che raccoglie due sue suites ed una ("Blue Palestine") che lui stesso commissionò alla grande autrice e bandleader nel 2019, quattro anni prima della sua morte. “Mundoagua" la composizione che apre il disco è stata scritta per commemorare l'Anno dell'acqua ed ha avuto la sua anteprima al Miller Theater di New ...

Album Review

Arturo O'Farrill: Mundoagua: Celebrating Carla Bley

Read "Mundoagua: Celebrating Carla Bley" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
February 11, 2025

Mundoagua, the latest album by composer and pianist Arturo O'Farrill's Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, is subdivided into three suites, the second of which is the four-movement “Blue Palestine," written and arranged by another celebrated composer and pianist, Carla Bley, a leading light in the avant-garde free jazz movement of the mid-twentieth century, who died of cancer in October 2023. The opening suite, “Mundoagua," commissioned by the Columbia University School of the Arts in 2018 to commemorate the ...

Album Review

Arturo O'Farrill & The Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble: Dreaming In Lions

Read "Dreaming In Lions" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
October 8, 2021

Music for dance comes in a variety of forms. At one end of the spectrum are abstract soundscapes composed without reference to the choreography with which they share the stage; an example being John Cage's work with the choreographer Merce Cunningham. At the other end of the spectrum is music written in close collaboration with the choreographer; an example being Igor Stravinsky's work for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, which reached its peak in 1910 with The Firebird, jointly realized by ...

Album Review

Arturo O'Farrill: Virtual Birdland

Read "Virtual Birdland" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 12, 2021

Whenever an obstacle presents itself--even one as devastating and disruptive as a global pandemic--it's a sure bet that musicians will find a way around it, a way to keep making music even in the most grievous circumstances. Jazz musicians have been especially creative during the Covid-19 scourge, using social media, the internet and any other means at their disposal to share their music with the world. True, the paychecks aren't as large or as regular as once they were, but ...

Album Review

Arturo O'Farrill: Four Questions

Read "Four Questions" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
September 2, 2020

Surprisingly this set marks the first time Arturo O'Farrill has recorded a set of solely his own compositions. It was worth the wait because this music, played by his Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, really demonstrates the cinematic sweep and variety of his writing. The set is constructed around two topical extended works. The first, “Four Questions," is based on four questions about the struggle for human rights and personal dignity first posed by African-American author W.E.B. DuBois in ...

Album Review

Arturo O'Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra: Four Questions

Read "Four Questions" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 25, 2020

The Four Questions addressed by composer / pianist Arturo O'Farrill's Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra on its latest album were first posed in 1903 by W.E.B. DuBois in his book The Souls of Black Folk and are answered herein by the esteemed educator / historian / social activist Dr. Cornel West. For the record, the questions are “what does integrity do in the face of adversity and oppression, what does honesty do in the face of lies and deception, what does ...