Jazz Articles about Thomas Milovac

About Thomas Milovac

Album Review

Ulysses Owens, Jr. and Generation Y: Kind of Grunge

Read "Kind of Grunge" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
September 26, 2026

New York-based master drummer Ulysses Owens Jr. is back, Generation Y in tow, with another generous helping of so-called “grunge jazz" deftly transformed to straight-ahead patterns in a style similar to that of the legendary Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers. This is not, however, precisely the same Generation Y that recorded the well-received album, Around the World with U, for the Cellar Music Group earlier in 2026. The lone holdover besides Owens is the versatile pianist Tyler ...

Album Review

Madre Vaca: Knights of the Round Table

Read "Knights of the Round Table" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 26, 2023

The legend of King Arthur and Camelot is depicted musically on Knights of the Round Table, the sixth album by the Florida-based eleven-member ensemble, Madre Vaca, whose themes are composed by drummer Benjamin Shorstein. While Knights is presented as a ten-part suite, there seems to be no connecting tissue aside from the names of individual works --"Arthur," “Camelot," “Galahad," “Merlin," “Guinevere" and “Lancelot" among them. True, there seems to be an over-all medieval vibe underlining Shorstein's music, ...

Album Review

Madre Vaca: The Elements

Read "The Elements" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 17, 2021

Ambitious? How about depicting musically four basic elements--fire, water, earth, wind--and doing so with only four musicians. On its fourth recording, The Elements, the guitar-led quartet Madre Vaca endeavors to do exactly that, and in roughly forty-one minutes. Each of the album's four selections was written by a member of the group: “Fire" by drummer Benjamin Shorstein; “Water" by guitarist Jarrett Carter; “Earth" by bassist Thomas Milovac; “Wind" by pianist Jonah Pierre. So how do they fare? ...