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Rodger Fox Big Band Featuring King Kapisi: The Brotherman Project
by Jack Bowers
If nothing--no matter how peculiar or aberrant--is undertaken without a reason, trombonist Rodger Fox, whose big band is the finest New Zealand has to offer, must have had his reasons for recording the band's newest album with the country's leading hip-hop artist, King Kapisi. As jazz, like hip-hop, is an acquired taste, it is fruitless for someone who admires and appreciates one to impugn the other. It is what it is. And so we have King Kapisi ...
read moreRodger Fox Big Band: Plays Hone Tuwhare
by Jack Bowers
New Zealand's flagship jazz ensemble, the Rodger Fox Big Band, marks its fiftieth anniversary with an impressive homage to “the people's poet," Hone Tuwhare (1922-2008), on the centenary of his birth. As is pointed out in the album's liner notes, Tuwhare “was loved and cherished by New Zealanders from all walks of life. Touring tirelessly, Hone shared his talent and inspired audiences in every corner of the country from primary and secondary schools to universities, factories to art galleries and ...
read moreThe Rodger Fox Big Band: Reimagined! The Roger Fox big Band Plays Sir Dave Dobbyn
by Jack Bowers
On Reimagined!, New Zealander Rodger Fox's superlative big band takes a fresh look at the music of Sir Dave Dobbyn, one of that country's most honored and beloved musicians. Although Dobbyn has spent his celebrated career in the fields of pop and rock, his evocative compositions lend themselves well to light and swinging interpretations by Fox's seventeen-member ensemble and more than half a dozen well-known guest artists from the U.S. Even so, there is enough heavy backbeat ...
read moreRodger Fox Big Band: You Gotta Know
by Jack Bowers
As trombonist Rodger Fox's superb New Zealand-based big band thunders toward its golden anniversary in 2023, the recordings keep coming. Here are two more, the first (Live) taped in October 2020 during what must have been a much longer concert at the Bruce Mason Centre in Auckland; the second, You Gotta Know, recorded that same year in Brooklyn, New York, following the band's appearance at the Jazz Education Network conference in New Orleans. The concert date features guest pianist Michael ...
read moreThe Rodger Fox Big Band: Plays New Zealand
by Jack Bowers
Even though such news would hardly make a ripple beyond the South Pacific, trombonist Rodger Fox's superlative big band was nearing its golden anniversary when Plays New Zealand was recorded in 2021. As the milestone loomed only two years in the distance, Fox decided it was time the band produced an album devoted entirely to new works written and arranged by his fellow countrymen and women. And so the excellent Plays New Zealand may be more accurately named “plays New ...
read moreThe Rodger Fox Big Band: Plays New Zealand
by Jack Bowers
Although trombonist Rodger Fox has somehow managed to keep New Zealand's finest big band alive and swinging for more than four decades, the band has never devoted an entire album to music written and arranged by New Zealanders--until now. That's not to say that Fox and the band have ignored music from their home country. Over the years, more than ninety compositions by New Zealand-based musicians have been commissioned for the ensemble, sixty-eight of which have made it onto various ...
read moreNew Zealand School of Music Big Band: Too Cool
by Jack Bowers
While the latest CD by the splendid New Zealand School of Music Big Band may not be Too Cool, it's definitely chilly enough to demand that the average listener wear earmuffs while sampling its frigid yet at the same time fiery bill of fare. Blues got you down? A few bars of the orchestra's sunny curtain-raiser, Bill Liston's “Blues to Begin With," should cast them into the nearest dustbin. If not, you may be too far gone to benefit from ...
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