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The Phil Norman Tentet: Then and Now
by Jack Bowers
There comes a time, usually during the fifth or sixth rendition of a “franchise" movie (think “Rocky" or “Star Trek"), when the phrase “enough is enough" inevitably springs to mind. While Then and Now, the seventh album by saxophonist Phil Norman's L.A.-based all-star Tentet, lands somewhere this side of overkill, its premise--to update and reintroduce classic themes from the jazz scene's illustrious past--is a tad shopworn, and serves for the most part to remind inveterate listeners that the original versions, ...
Continue ReadingThe Phil Norman Tentet: Live at the Lighthouse
by Jack Bowers
Among the birthplaces of the so–called “West Coast sound” in Jazz back in the ’50s and ’60s was bassist Howard Rumsey’s fabled Lighthouse at Hermosa Beach, which served as home base from time to time for such musical legends as Shorty Rogers, Art Pepper, Shelly Manne, Conte Candoli, Bud Shank, Frank Rosolino, Maynard Ferguson, Bob Enevoldsen, brothers Claude and Stu Williamson, Lou Levy, Rolf Ericson, Jimmy Giuffre, Hampton Hawes, Max Roach, Marty Paich, Bob Cooper, Sonny Clark, Stan Levey, Bill ...
Continue ReadingThe Phil Norman Tentet: Yesterday's Gardenias
by Jack Bowers
The Phil Norman Tentet’s debut, On the Town,, recorded in 1996 and released last year, was such an unqualified success that living up to it posed an immense challenge. If the ensemble’s second endeavor, Yesterday’s Gardenia’s, doesn’t quite scale the Olympian heights reached by On the Town, it climbs so near that one has to applaud and admire the effort as well as the outcome. Since a tentet is not as loose–limbed or unstudied as most smaller detachments nor as ...
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