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About Sara Caswell
Emilio Solla and La Inestable de Brooklyn: Handmade
by Joshua Weiner
As the power of artificial intelligence (AI) grows exponentially, it has begun to permeate even the highest expressions of our humanity. AI-generated art of many kinds--literary, visual, and musical--appears on screens large and small daily. Handmade, a gorgeous double album by New York-based Argentinian pianist and composer Emilio Solla, featuring his nonet Inestable de Brooklyn, seeks to build a bridge across this uncanny valley." Handmade is an apologia of the tactile," says GRAMMY-nominated Solla. We are moving further away from ...
Continue ReadingChris Potter: Alive With Ghosts Today
by Kevin Poindexter
The history of America is haunted by ghosts of the past. These ghosts transform our present-day landscape, our everyday lives, and inform the very core of our existence. On Alive With Ghosts Today (Edition Records, 2026), saxophonist Chris Potter steps away from the normal high-adrenaline jazz that has signified his recent outings and has instead put together a band designed to feel more like a small-town ensemble, a mixture of jazz and folk, to lead through a suite of tunes that examines ...
Continue ReadingDave Stryker: Stryker with Strings Goes to the Movies
by Richard J Salvucci
If this recording were named Dave Stryker Plays Bernard Hermann" (or Miklós Rózsa or Elmer Bernstein), well that would be just fine. They were all gifted composers who wrote film scores. The consensus would likely be that a musician like Stryker was hardly wasting his time, but Stryker With Strings Goes to the Movies hits the hopelessly middlebrow button. So how seriously anyone decides to take the results is anyone's guess. That would be a pity, ...
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Franco Ambrosetti: Sweet Caress
by Alberto Bazzurro
Il rapporto fra jazz e archi è sempre stato piuttosto tormentato. A ottant'anni suonati (è nato nel dicembre 1941 e l'incisione data dicembre 2023, quindi 82 giusti giusti) ci casca anche un musicista glorioso come Franco Ambrosetti, che confeziona un album che verrebbe quasi da definire pomicioso" (fin dal titolo), a dispetto dei musicisti coinvolti nella band in quanto tale (string orchestra esclusa, quindi). Otto i brani, per metà del trombettista (qui flicornista) ticinese, che suona ovunque benissimo, ...
Continue ReadingBen Kono Group: Voyages
by Jerome Wilson
This album is saxophonist Ben Kono's tribute to his family's history, dating back to his grandfather's migration from Japan to the United States in 1911, performed by a combination of small jazz group and string quartet, The first half of the work concerns with his family's transition into life in the United States, and the second half celebrates four generations of Kono's lineage, going from his grandparents all the way through to his own children. The strings are ...
Continue ReadingDave Stryker: Stryker with Strings Goes to the Movies
by Jack Bowers
Guitarist Dave Stryker, who is at home in any venue, Goes to the Movies on this ambitious album, wherein his working quartet is greeted by a thirty-piece orchestra with strings and four talented guest artists. There are some gems here--Henry Mancini's Dreamsville," Rodgers and Hammerstein's Edelweiss," Ennio Morricone's theme from Cinema Paradiso among them--and a few pleasant surprises as well. Songs in the latter group include You Only Live Twice," from the James Bond film of that ...
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Christopher Zuar Orchestra: Exuberance
by Angelo Leonardi
È decisamente un periodo d'oro per l'orchestrazione jazz. Ai molti bandleader e arrangiatori emersi nel nuovo millennio, si aggiunge decisamente Christopher Zuar, che firma il secondo album confermando le doti espresse in Musings (Sunnyside), il debutto di otto anni fa. Con un diploma al New England Conservatory e un master alla Manhattan School of Music, Zuar aggiunge una spiccata fantasia nell'arricchire il modern mainstream orchestrale di nuove suggestioni. Questo progetto è stato concepito tra il 2017 e ...
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