Jazz Articles about Ron Aprea

About Ron Aprea

Album Review

Angela DeNiro: Swingin' with Legends 2

Read "Swingin' with Legends 2" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
December 14, 2023

On Swingin' with Legends 2, her fourth recorded collaboration with arranger (and husband) Ron Aprea's big band, vocalist Angela DeNiro sings beautifully--and receives a lot of help from her friends, especially guests Ken Peplowski on clarinet, Randy Brecker on trumpet and Lew Tabackin on tenor sax and flute. And what a band! Well-stocked with stars who are eager to fly whenever Aprea raises his baton. Not that DeNiro needs much help. She is quite simply a marvelous ...

Album Review

Angela DeNiro: Swingin' with Legends 2

Read "Swingin' with Legends 2" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
December 10, 2023

Vocalist Angela DeNiro sings with blue-ribbon vocal abilities. This is evident in her release Swingin' With Legends 2 . Accompanied by the Ron Aprea Big Band, supplemented by special guests Randy Brecker, Ken Peplowski and Lew Tabackin, she sails through fourteen love songs written by some of the greatest composers of the American Songbook, providing a deep understanding and command of the material she performs. The album opens with “New York City Blues," a not frequently ...

Album Review

Angela DeNiro with the Ron Aprea Big Band: Swingin' with Legends 2

Read "Swingin' with Legends 2" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
July 27, 2023

Swingin' with Legends 2 from Angela DeNiro with the Ron Aprea Big Band, is a follow-up to their first Legends effort in 1988. The album, as was its Grammy-entered predecessor, is a quintessentially classic big band recording featuring a fine female vocalist. The fourteen tunes here are predominantly from the Great American Songbook, with jazz greats Randy Brecker, Lew Tabackin, and Ken Peplowski delivering outstanding cameos. The opener “New York Blues" is a flat-out swinger with DeNiro belting ...

Book Excerpts

The Era I Almost Missed

by Ron Aprea
March 20, 2022

The following is an excerpt from “Section 9: Les Elgart" of The Era I Almost Missed--An Autobiography by Ron Aprea (Self Published, 2021). The Embers West / Richie Barz Still rehearsing my band and looking for a room in Manhattan, my drummer Jimmie Young hooked me up with pianist Mike Longo. Mike just finished touring with Dizzy Gillespie and was leading the house band at the Embers West on West 49th Street. Mike arranged to have my band ...

Book Review

The Era I Almost Missed - An Autobiography

by Nicholas F. Mondello
March 14, 2022

The Era I Almost Missed -An Autobiography Ron Aprea 245 Pages ISBN: # 978-1-6678015-0-6 Self Published 2021 Jazz musicians are an oral bunch. Freud, although he despised music, would have had a field day studying them. Their autobiographies tend to fall into a handful of categories. Some read as if you're reading the phone book—a litany of names and places ad nauseam. Others tend to become more personally revealing as they detail the ...

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Interview

Ron Aprea: On John Lennon, Jazz Legends, And Life In Music

by Dan Bilawsky
August 16, 2015

Picture this: The year is 1974 and you've just gotten off the road with Lionel Hampton. The phone rings, and on the other end of the line is an old buddy of yours. After a little small talk, he asks if you're available for a recording session. You indicate that you're free and ask him about the session. That's when he tells you, nonchalantly, that it's for John Lennon. That little episode may sound like it's coming ...

Album Review

Ron Aprea: Ron Aprea Pays Tribute to John Lennon and the Beatles

Read "Ron Aprea Pays Tribute to John Lennon and the Beatles" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
July 5, 2015

The John Lennon-Paul McCartney canon has been recorded by everyone with the possible exception of “Honey Boo Boo" and “Mini Me." Some of those efforts are feckless attempts at moving the popular-genre so far away from its source it is laughable. Saxophone artist, Ron Aprea had the unique opportunity (along with trumpeter Steve Madaio, he of Stevie Wonder and the L.A. studios) to record with John Lennon on his post-Beatles award-winning album, Walls and Bridges (1974, EMI). ...