Jazz Articles about Scott Colley

About Scott Colley

Album Review

Franco Ambrosetti's album is called simply Nora. Short and sweet, four letters, two syllables. But it could easily have been called “Franco Ambrosetti with Strings," as the Swiss flugelhornist & trumpeter follows the orchestral path of alto saxophonist Charlie Parker and his groundbreaking Charlie Parker With Strings (Verve, 1950), trumpeter Chet Baker's Chet Baker with Strings (Columbia, 1953) or trumpeter Clifford Brown's Clifford Brown with String (Verve, 1955). Those early forays into orchestral jazz set the template of ...

Album Review

Anders Koppel: Mulberry Street Symphony

Read "Mulberry Street Symphony" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
March 9, 2022

A father-son collaboration at its most sublime, Mulberry Street Symphony is a natural and logical extension of saxophonist/composer Benjamin Koppel's eclectic sets of funk and free improvisation The Ultimate Soul & Jazz Revue (Cowbell Music, 2020) and The Art of the Quartet (Cowbell Music, 2020). The prolific Dane wisely aligns himself here with redoubtable counterparts in the persons of bassist Scott Colley and drummer Brian Blade to form the core of a larger musical aggregation including the Odense Symphony Orchestra ...

Album Review

Franco Ambrosetti: Lost Within You

Read "Lost Within You" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
June 26, 2021

Lost Within You is a masterpiece of smoldering passion and beauty ignited by the exquisite trumpet and flugelhorn melodies of Franco Ambrosetti. Ambrosetti assembled an enviable ensemble: bassist Scott Colley and drummer Jack DeJohnette in the rhythm section, plus guitarist John Scofield, and Renee Rosnes and Uri Caine switching turns as pianist. But the star of Lost Within You is Ambrosetti's haunting, delicate and graceful sound, revealed in one masterful ballad after another. “Miles Davis was ...

Album Review

Benjamin Koppel: The Ultimate Soul & Jazz Revue

Read "The Ultimate Soul & Jazz Revue" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
April 21, 2021

Listen to music long enough, and it's almost bound to happen: You're not sure exactly what you want to listen to, but you know that whatever you listen to needs must bump and groove. The Ultimate Soul & Jazz Revue, an anthology of American jazz, soul and R&B recorded live at a Copenhagen music festival by Danish saxophonist Benjamin Koppel and his big band, is some first-rate scratch for that itch. Ultimate Soul & Jazz neatly packages Koppel's ...

Album Review

Diego Pinera: Odd Wisdom

Read "Odd Wisdom" reviewed by Phillip Woolever

by Phillip Woolever
April 12, 2021

In certain musical occasions the essence of time is more vividly pronounced than others. That equation is often pronounced clearly in the technique of how a drummer applies various rhythms, and the resulting effect those metrics have on a song or project. Drummer Diego Pinera is a widely travelled percussionist from Uruguay, currently based in Berlin. His second release on the German-based ACT label demonstrates a vast range of compositional skills recorded during one brief, extremely productive session ...

Album Review

Franco Ambrosetti: Lost Within You

Read "Lost Within You" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
March 26, 2021

The Franco Ambrosetti Band Band's Lost Within You is a supremely unassuming listening experience. An all-star band helps the trumpeter composer conjure a sensuous mood that only grows progressively engrossing over the course of the seventy-plus minutes playing time of the album. The seductive sensation is an inexorable process that commences with the very first cut. The second-longest track on the record next to “Body and Soul," Horace Silver's “Peace" features drummer Jack DeJohnette at the piano and ...

Album Review

Franco Ambrosetti Band: Lost Within You

Read "Lost Within You" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
February 8, 2021

Swiss trumpeter / flugelhorninst Franco Ambrosetti opens his Lost Within You with “Peace," from the pen of pianist Horace Silver. The original rendition comes from Silver's Blowin' The Blues Away (Blue Note, 1959). It was a composition that Silver stumbled upon when he was “doodling around on the piano, and it just came to me." It featured Blue Mitchell's characteristically brassy trumpet tone. It was unusual in the Silver songbook—an introspective, patiently deployed ballad, instead of the normal hard-charging, romps ...