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Chuck Owen and the Jazz Surge: Within Us

by Jerome Wilson
Florida's Chuck Owen has been a jazz educator for over 40 years, led his big band, The Jazz Surge, for 25 years and earned seven Grammy nominations along the way, so he cannot be called an unknown. Still, it seems that he is nowhere as well known as he should be, going by the quality of the music on this CD which celebrates The Jazz Surge's 25th anniversary. The band's music has some of the brassy punch of ...
Continue ReadingChuck Owen and the Jazz Surge: Within Us

by Angelo Leonardi
Giunta al settimo disco, l'orchestra The Jazz Surge di Chuck Owen celebra i 25 anni di un'attività discografica ricca di riconoscimenti (tra cui sette nominations ai Grammy) e prestigiose collaborazioni (Chick Corea, Joe Lovano, Bob Brookmeyer, Dave Douglas, Bill Holman, Gerald Wilson e molti altri). Nata nel 1995 come estensione della cattedra di Owen all'University Of South Florida la formazione ha ottenuto negli anni rilievo nazionale col suo stile immerso nella tradizione orchestrale jazzistica ma ricco di ambiziose ...
Continue ReadingChuck Owen: Within Us

by Pierre Giroux
Anniversaries are a big deal, especially when they celebrate a notable achievement in the history of a contemporary jazz big band. So when the 25th Anniversary of the first recording of the Jazz Surge came along, Chuck Owen thought it would be a suitable occasion to acknowledge the past and continue to look forward, with the current release Within Us as an attestation to the collective identity of the band. The 19-piece band that is directed ...
Continue ReadingChuck Owen and the Jazz Surge: Within Us

by Jack Bowers
Any big band celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary has earned a triumph surpassing most others. To mark the occasion with an album as admirable as this one is icing on the celebratory cake. The fact is, composer/arranger Chuck Owen's Florida-based Jazz Surge, formed in 1995, shows no signs of aging or becoming obsolete. Thanks to Owen's broad-beamed and colorful charts, the Jazz Surge is as mesmerizing as a memoir and stylish as tomorrow. Half a dozen of Owen's ...
Continue ReadingWarren Wolf: Reincarnated

by Aaron Paschal
Warren Wolf is a Baltimore-born vibraphonist and a member of the SFJAZZ Collective. Reincarnation (2020), his fourth album as leader on Mack Avenue Records, sees Wolf dive into an entirely different side of his musical personality. We got together via ZOOM to talk about his musical influences, how he's staying creative during the COVID pandemic and his new album. All About Jazz: Were you born and raised in Baltimore? Warren Wolf: Yes, Baltimore is home! I ...
Continue ReadingWarren Wolf: Reincarnation

by Dan Bilawsky
Less a true rebirth than a return to the stylistic suggestions that surrounded Warren Wolf's ears in the 1990s, Reincarnation finds the forty-year-old vibraphonist folding his serious jazz persona within settings that lean heavily on soul and R&B. Embracing the grooves, glazes and hooks endemic to those realms, Wolf delivers music that's both slick and smile-inducing. Paving the way for what's to come down the road, Baltimore radio personality Marcellus Bassman" Shepard introduces the new" Warren Wolf ...
Continue ReadingChristian McBride: The Movement Revisited

by Chris May
The spring 2020 release of The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait Of Four Icons is the latest chapter in Christian McBride's inspirational salute to the African American civil rights movement and to four of its heroes: Dr. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. Embracing big band jazz, small group jazz, gospel, funk and chorale musics, together with spoken word passages, the suite employs an eighteen-piece band, the ten-piece Voices Of The Flame gospel choir, two lead ...
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