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Jazz Articles about Vince Mendoza
About Vince Mendoza
Instrument: Composer / conductor
Vince Mendoza/Metropole Orkest: Olympians
by Jack Bowers
Eight-time Grammy-winning composer/arranger Vince Mendoza, born and raised in Norwalk, CT, has enjoyed great success overseas--in Europe, to be more precise--since releasing an album with Germany's WDR Big Band in 1994. The following year, Mendoza began collaborating with the Dutch Metropole Orkest and in 1998 was named its principal guest conductor. Olympians is Mendoza's third recording with the massive, string-laden Metropole. He has recorded other albums with the London and Czech Symphony Orchestras. Here in the U.S., ...
Continue ReadingVince Mendoza Metropole Orkest: Olympians
by Richard J Salvucci
Many years ago Dizzy Gillespie recorded an album called The New Continent (Limelight, 1965). Whether it was commercially successful is hard to say, but it featured an all-star cast of Los Angeles session players. The recording made a deep impression on some listeners because it was creative, dynamic, exotic and simply enjoyable. Good compositions (by Lalo Schifrin), arrangements and musicians will do that, even if the result is a bit different than mainstream jazz. Or mainstream Gillespie. ...
Continue ReadingVince Mendoza: Freedom Over Everything
by Jack Bowers
Freedom Over Everything is a rather tall order, one that New York-born composer & arranger Vince Mendoza has chosen to describe in musical terms—with help from the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and a number of guest artists including, on one track, the acclaimed American tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman— via a picturesque seven-movement “Concerto for Orchestra." Two brief observations: first, this is charming and tasteful music, unerringly performed by the CNSO; second, it is almost entirely symphonic, more ...
Continue ReadingVince Mendoza - Czech National Symphony Orchestra: Freedom Over Everything
by Angelo Leonardi
L'integrazione tra scrittura per orchestra sinfonica e jazz si arricchisce di un originale contributo di Vince Mendoza, che dirige la Czech National Symphony Orchestra in nuove partiture. Il fulcro dell'album è la suite in sei movimenti “Concerto For Orchestra," in cui si integra il tema “Freedom For Everything." Seguono due lunghe composizioni: “To The Edge Of Longing" e “New York Stories." Commissionato dalla citata CNSO, si avvale del contributo di Antonio Sanchez, Joshua Redman, del rapper Black Thought e della ...
Continue ReadingVince Mendoza: Streams of Influence Flowing into a River of Sound
by Victor L. Schermer
Vince Mendoza is a jazz composer, arranger, and conductor of consummate originality, skill, and adaptability, so much so that he has for several decades received frequent invitations and commissions from the whole gamut of ensembles and performers like the WDR Big Band, the Metropole Orkest in the Netherlands, the Los Angeles and Berlin Philharmonic, and the Czech National Symphony Orchestra. He has written and arranged for jazz icons like the late great saxophonist Michael Brecker and pianist Fred Hersch, and ...
Continue ReadingLuciana Souza: Storytellers
by Angelo Leonardi
Ci sono dischi che raggiungono un equilibrio così prezioso tra gli ambiti strumentali e vocali (in un clima di lirismo, ricchezza interpretativa e freschezza) che regalano nuove emozioni a ogni ascolto e non vorresti staccartene. È quanto accade all'album appena pubblicato da Luciana Souza, inciso con la WDR Big Band diretta da Vince Mendoza. Altro aspetto avvincente è la variopinta scelta del repertorio. Otto brani vengono dal songbook di grandi autori brasiliani: Antonio Carlos Jobim, Ivan Lins, ...
Continue ReadingWDR 3 Jazzfest 2018
by Henning Bolte
Theater Gütersloh / Bunker Ulmenwall BielefeldGütersloh / Bielefeld February 1-3, 2018 WDR stands for Westdeutscher Rundfunk, which is the public radio organization of the German federal state of North Rhine Westphalia based in Cologne, the jazz capital of the federal state. WDR 3 refers to the third program-line nowadays also indicated as Kulturradio (cultural broadcasting). Essence I experienced a remarkable coherency of a surprisingly rich and vivid regional radio landscape and a sympathizing audience ...
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