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Jazz Articles about Xavier Del Castillo

About Xavier Del Castillo

Album Review

Sometimes very talented people write difficult music. The music is difficult because its intent is not immediately clear. Or it does not follow canonical criteria, at least as currently understood. Music history presents us with many examples: Charles Ives, Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich--these are only very famous “classical" composers whose work passed from controversial to acceptable to mainstream. In jazz, one thinks of Ornette Coleman or someone probably considerably less orthodox and perhaps much less well known.

Album Review

Ben Rosenblum Nebula Project: A Thousand Pebbles

Read "A Thousand Pebbles" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
May 11, 2023

Ben Rosenblum's Nebula Project is a group which incorporates sounds from all over the world. Gospel, Brazilian rhythms, European folk dances, and other kinds of music all mix freely with jazz in this exciting and unpredictable set. The horn players, trumpeter Wayne Tucker and reed players Jasper Dutz and Xavier Del Castillo, all do excellent work in realizing the leader's freewheeling concepts. “Bulgares" has Tucker's trumpet and Dutz's bass clarinet darting out in a whirling Bulgarian rhythm over ...

Album Review

Ben Rosenblum Nebula Project: A Thousand Pebbles

Read "A Thousand Pebbles" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
March 26, 2023

This is music for the open-minded. On A Thousand Pebbles, his fourth album as leader, New York-based pianist & accordionist Ben Rosenblum's seven-member Nebula Project traverses a number of musical landscapes, from Bulgaria to Brazil, Ireland to Israel, and realms beyond, offering a pleasurable smorgasbord of contemporary jazz that is always engaging and never shopworn. Rosenblum the composer wrote all of the album's eleven numbers save one, Antonio Carlos Jobim & Chico Baurque's melodious “Song of the ...

Album Review

Ben Rosenblum Nebula Project: A Thousand Pebbles

Read "A Thousand Pebbles" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro

by Alberto Bazzurro
March 7, 2023

Il giovane pianista e fisarmonicista (qui più la seconda della prima pelle, diremmo, almeno come incidenza sul sound d'insieme) newyorchese Ben Rosenblum firma con questo A Thousand Pebbles il quarto album a suo nome e il secondo alla testa del Nebula Project, sestetto (qui rinforzato da Xavier Del Castillo) versatile e capace di generare un clima solare e spesso festoso, intriso di umori latini e comunque popolari in senso lato (Rosenblum, che non di rado si sovrappone su entrambi i ...

Album Review

Adam O' Farrill: Visions of Your Other

Read "Visions of Your Other" reviewed by Vincenzo Roggero

by Vincenzo Roggero
February 13, 2023

Nella famiglia la musica è di casa: ritroviamo il padre, Arturo O'Farrill, pianista e compositore vincitore di Grammy, il nonno, Chico O'Farrill, leggendario bandleader cubano, Allison Deane, la mamma, pianista classica, Zack O'Farrill, il fratello maggiore, batterista. Non stupisce che anche il “piccolo" Adam (classe 1994) abbia iniziato a percorrere giovanissimo quei sentieri frequentando e registrando con maestri del calibro di Rudresh Mahanthappa, Mary Halvorson, Mulatu Astatke, Stephan Crump etc... fino a mettere in piedi un quartetto denominato Stranger Days ...