Jazz Articles about Tom Luer

About Tom Luer

Album Review

Dan West: Presenting the Dan West Big Band

Read "Presenting the Dan West Big Band" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
March 29, 2026

"If it walks like a big band and talks like a big band..." well, that does not always mean it actually is a big band. For example, Los Angeles-based composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Dan West 's able group is by and large an octet which, by means of modern electronics, has been transformed into a full-fledged big band, and a pretty good one at that. On its debut recording, Presenting the Dan West Big Band, the ensemble is strong and ...

Album Review

Dave Slonaker Big Band: Shifty Paradigms

Read "Shifty Paradigms" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
February 16, 2026

While Los Angeles-based composer and arranger Dave Slonaker's paradigms may be shifty, his all-star big band is about as forthright as one could wish. On Shifty Paradigms, his third recording fronting the band, Slonaker guides his peerless eighteen-member ensemble through its paces on a dynamic and always-swinging program that encompasses seven of his stellar original compositions and the venerable standard, “Bye Bye Blues." Slonaker's game plan is simple: give the band superior themes and charts on which to ...

Album Review

Mark Masters Ensemble: Sam Rivers 100

Read "Sam Rivers 100" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
May 26, 2025

The Mark Masters Ensemble released Porgy and Bess Redefined! (Capri Records) in 2005. The music was taken from the George Gershwin/DuBose Heyward English-language opera, which was first performed in 1935. Masters' take on the classic was brilliantly expressed by the ensemble, who dug into his adventurous charts with freedom mixed with respect for the familiar and often-covered (most notably by the Miles Davis/Gil Evans teaming) original. It was a breakout effort for Masters. Billy Harper was there on tenor sax, ...

Album Review

Mark Masters: Sam Rivers 100

Read "Sam Rivers 100" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 23, 2025

Sam Rivers 100 is the first of two homages recorded in 2023-24 by arranger Mark Masters and his blue chip southern California-based ensemble. This one pays tribute to the music of the late saxophonist Sam Rivers on the hundredth anniversary of his birth; the second, Dance, Eternal Spirits, Dance! salutes the music of tenor saxophonist Billy Harper who is the ensemble's guest soloist on both albums. Rivers, who died in December 2011, was an early bebopper who ...

Album Review

Dave Slonaker: Convergency

Read "Convergency" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci

by Richard J Salvucci
September 22, 2022

In December 1910, Virginia Woolf once observed, human character changed and, along with it, so did everything else. Politics, society, religion, sex, all of it, she thought, would leave the ancien regime behind. And, to a point, she was correct. Within a few years, the old world was gone, swept away by war and revolution. It was not coming back. Ever. Somehow, listening to the marvelous musical products of modern big bands, Woolf seems oddly relevant. The level ...

Album Review

Dave Slonaker Big Band: Convergency

Read "Convergency" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
August 22, 2022

While big-band albums generally differ, sometimes widely, in tone and temperament, there are definitive criteria by which every one may be evaluated--arrangements, performers, sound quality, sequencing and, above all, the elusive but imperative swing quotient. Dave Slonaker checks all those boxes and more on Convergency, a superlative successor to his excellent Grammy-nominated debut album, Intrada, released in 2013. To begin with, Slonaker, best known as a film and television composer, is an excellent big-band writer and arranger, ...

Album Review

Dave Slonaker Big Band: Convergency

Read "Convergency" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
August 3, 2022

Composer/conductor Dave Slonaker probably won't qualify as “prolific," at least based on recorded output alone, as he spends a lot of his time behind the scenes in film and television work—but one must appreciate the level of craftsmanship that he brings to his big band projects. His debut release, Intrada (Origin Records, 2014), received a well-earned Grammy nomination, and his sophomore effort is no less accomplished, with the well-designed compositions and outstanding ensemble work that justify all the attention it ...