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Jarrett Carter
Madre Vaca: Knights of the Round Table
by Jack Bowers
The legend of King Arthur and Camelot is depicted musically on Knights of the Round Table, the sixth album by the Florida-based eleven-member ensemble, Madre Vaca, whose themes are composed by drummer Benjamin Shorstein. While Knights is presented as a ten-part suite, there seems to be no connecting tissue aside from the names of individual works --"Arthur," Camelot," Galahad," Merlin," Guinevere" and Lancelot" among them. True, there seems to be an over-all medieval vibe underlining Shorstein's music, ...
read moreBlue Muse: It Never Entered My Mind
by Hrayr Attarian
Blue Muse, the ensemble that tenor saxophonist Sarah Lee founded, plays mainstream jazz with elegance and vigor. The group's second recording, the delightful It Never Entered My Mind, is an engaging batch of standards crackling with vibrant spontaneity which highlights both the distinctive virtuosity and the combined artistry of the musicians involved. Pianist Horace Silver's rhythmically intricate Nutville" opens with drummer John Medico's brisk rumble leading to the effervescent main theme. Trumpeter Steve Strawley launches into an energetic ...
read moreMadre Vaca: The Elements
by Jack Bowers
Ambitious? How about depicting musically four basic elements--fire, water, earth, wind--and doing so with only four musicians. On its fourth recording, The Elements, the guitar-led quartet Madre Vaca endeavors to do exactly that, and in roughly forty-one minutes. Each of the album's four selections was written by a member of the group: Fire" by drummer Benjamin Shorstein; Water" by guitarist Jarrett Carter; Earth" by bassist Thomas Milovac; Wind" by pianist Jonah Pierre. So how do they fare? ...
read moreMadre Vaca: Winterreise
by Jack Bowers
For its third recording, the Florida-based jazz octet Madre Vaca has chosen to perform music by Franz Schuberthold it; stop right there! Music by who? Yes, that's what it saysmusic by none other than Franz Schubert (1797-1828), an Austrian composer of what we know as classical music who in his brief lifetime wrote more than 600 secular vocal works, seven complete symphonies (and the well-known Unfinished"), as well as sacred chorales, operas, and chamber, piano and incidental music. When did ...
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