Jazz Articles about Sara Caswell

About Sara Caswell

Album Review

Chuck Owen and the Jazz Surge: Within Us

Read "Within Us" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
September 9, 2021

Any big band celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary has earned a triumph surpassing most others. To mark the occasion with an album as admirable as this one is icing on the celebratory cake. The fact is, composer/arranger Chuck Owen's Florida-based Jazz Surge, formed in 1995, shows no signs of aging or becoming obsolete. Thanks to Owen's broad-beamed and colorful charts, the Jazz Surge is as mesmerizing as a memoir and stylish as tomorrow. Half a dozen of Owen's ...

Album Review

Judy Wexler: Back to the Garden

Read "Back to the Garden" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci

by Richard J Salvucci
June 2, 2021

Man, if you can pick a tougher project to sell to an aging Boomer than Judy Wexler's Back to the Garden, then you will have to say what it might be. For a lot of the Swinging and Breathing Elderly, this music is intensely personal. Not just where were you, or who were you with? But what were you doing? And most of all, why? Not everyone was a protester or a demonstrator, much less a hippie. Not everyone made ...

Album Review

Judy Wexler: Back to the Garden

Read "Back to the Garden" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
May 29, 2021

A glance at the tracks on this album might make one think that it is a well-selected gathering of '60s message tunes from compilation stalwart, Rhino Records. That not being the case, rest assured that Back to the Garden presents those iconic Pop selections so incredibly re- imagined that what we experience could easily be considered “new selections." Judy Wexler--petite in stature, but tremendously talented and agile in artistry--and her cadre of LA's best, delivers her finest performance ...

Album Review

Brian Landrus, Fred Hersch, Drew Gress, Billy Hart: For Now

Read "For Now" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
March 17, 2021

Due anni dopo il sontuoso progetto orchestrale pubblicato nell'album Generations (Blueland 2018) il compositore e multistrumentista allievo di Bob Brookmeyer, è tornato a incidere con un piccolo organico, aperto a suggestioni cameristiche (con l'aggiunta di un quartetto d'archi) o di taglio neo-bop (con il trombettista Michael Rodriguez). Quand'era adolescente Brian Landrus era una testa calda, il peggiore della scuola, sempre pronto a picchiarsi coi coetanei. Poi il jazz l'ha molto cambiato e risulta difficile crederlo oggi, di ...

Album Review

Brian Landrus: For Now

by Doug Hall
May 30, 2020

Low-register reed specialist and multi-instrumentalist and composer Brian Landrus confronted a difficult period in his life and used adversity to inspire a passionate declaration in song on his 2020 release For Now (BlueLand Records). He took advice from the late valve-trombonist, composer and educator Bob Brookmeyer, “book a recording session before you have the music composed—then you have a goal." Alternating between the baritone saxophone and the bass clarinet, Landrus creates wonderful lower-range tones and compositions with instruments ...

Album Review

Brian Landrus: For Now

by Jack Bowers
May 20, 2020

On For Now, his tenth album as leader, multi-reed specialist Brian Landrus gives voice to the many faces of romance, using as his means of expression a talented core quintet, amplified on several themes by a four-member string section, with arrangements by the notable opera composer Robert Aldridge. While Landrus plays four instruments including flute and alto flute, he sticks for the most part to baritone sax and bass clarinet, soloing on one or the other on almost every one ...

Album Review

9 Horses: Perfectest Herald

Read "Perfectest Herald" reviewed by Budd Kopman

by Budd Kopman
October 13, 2015

Perfectest Herald is another release that stretches the label “jazz" or even that of “creative improvised music" as it casts its spell and ultimately becomes completely enveloping. 9 Horses, the trio put together by composer and mandolin virtuoso Joseph Brent, consists of two other extraordinary players: violinist Sara Caswell and bassist Shawn Conley who seem just perfect for Brent's music. What is heard is a wonderful mixing of many styles and genres, including classical, jazz and folk which ...