Jazz Articles about University of Colorado

University of Colorado Jazz Ensemble 1: CU Over the Rainbow

by Jack Bowers
December 7, 2006

Over the past five years the University of Colorado's Jazz Studies program has earned no less than 13 Student Music Awards from Down Beat magazine. I say “earned because (a) the competition is gaining strength each year; and (b) this is one close-knit and hardworking group of undergrads, as one can readily verify on CU Over the Rainbow.

Of course, any disc that opens with Porter and closes with Gershwin merits extra credit from this impartial observer, especially when played ...

The University of Colorado Jazz Ensemble 1: CU 'Round Midnight

by Jack Bowers
March 15, 2004

For its second album, and first under new director John Davis, the University of Colorado Jazz Ensemble 1 has chosen to focus on the music of pianist/composer Jim McNeely... no easy task, my friend. Four of the nine selections were written by McNeely, who is music director of the cutting-edge Vanguard and Stockholm Jazz Orchestras. To make navigating their treacherous shoals even more perilous, the ensemble performs three of them in concert, but if Davis’s students are working up a ...