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Jesse Cahill
Vancouver Jazz Orchestra: Vancouver Jazz Orchestra Meets Brian Charette
by Pierre Giroux
The Vancouver Jazz Orchestra's debut album arrives with a sense of purpose that feels both timely and reassuringly traditional. Formed to showcase the city's rich pool of jazz musicians while creating a platform for composers and arrangers, the VJO proves itself not through rhetoric but through sound. This release features a confident, well-rehearsed ensemble playing music almost exclusively by Vancouver writers, united here by the invigorating presence of Hammond B3 master Brian Charette. Steve Kaldestad's “Equestrian Interlude" opens ...
Continue ReadingVancouver Jazz Orchestra: Meets Brian Charette
by Jack Bowers
Through the years, Canada has produced an impressive number of world-renowned big bands including Rob McConnell's peerless Boss Brass, the Toronto and Winnipeg Jazz Orchestras, those led by trombonist Dave McMurdo, pianist Jill Townsend and trumpeter Steve McDade, and one of the world's foremost undergraduate bands, Montreal's McGill University Jazz Ensemble. On its debut recording, Meets Brian Charette, the Vancouver Jazz Orchestra proves beyond any doubt that it deserves inclusion in that special fraternity. Simply put, the VJO ...
Continue ReadingCory Weeds: Cory Weeds Meets Jerry Weldon
by Jack Bowers
A proper response to the statement Cory Weeds Meets Jerry Weldon could well be “it's about time!" Although widely separated geographically--Weeds is Canadian, Weldon a native New Yorker--these masters of the tenor saxophone have been brightening stages and delighting audiences at venues in the U.S. and around the world for decades. And even though they have 'met' professionally more than once, it is only now--in 2025--that Weeds and Weldon have joined forces and pooled their enormous talents to produce a ...
Continue ReadingCorey Weeds: Cory Weeds Meets Jerry Weldon
by Pierre Giroux
Tenor saxophone battles are a rich tradition in jazz, dating back to the vibrant days of Gene Ammons and Dexter Gordon and especially the fiery partnership of Eddie Davis and Johnny Griffin. With Cory Weeds Meets Jerry Weldon, the torch is passed with style, swagger, and an infectious swing. Weeds, the Canadian impresario and saxophonist, teams up with seasoned tenor giant Jerry Weldon, whose commanding tone and blues-inflected phrasing offer both a challenge and a source of inspiration. Their interplay ...
Continue ReadingNick Hempton Cory Weeds: Horns Locked
by Pierre Giroux
The storied tradition of tenor saxophone battles has produced some of jazz's most thrilling moments, dating back to the classic duels of Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt or Johnny Griffin and Eddie Davis. Carrying that torch forward with equal measures of bravado and reverence are Nick Hempton and Cory Weeds on Horns Locked, a rollicking straight-ahead session that captures the spirit of friendly combat and deep mutual admiration. Split between an electrifying live performance at Frankie's ...
Continue ReadingNick Hempton-Cory Weeds: Horns Locked
by Jack Bowers
It has been far too long since anyone had the pleasure of eavesdropping on a two-tenor duel as heated and expressive as the one between Canadian gurus Nick Hempton and Cory Weeds on the suitably named Horns Locked. As the album's opening number, James Moody's fast-chugging “Last Train from Overbrook," unfolded, the memories came flooding back: hazy snapshots of Gene Ammons, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt, Wardell Gray, Johnny Griffith, Lockjaw Davis and their counterparts who made battling tenors a classic ...
Continue ReadingCory Weeds: Home Cookin'
by Jack Bowers
On Home Cookin', his second recording with an eleven-piece “little big band," tenor saxophonist Cory Weeds is doing the best he can. Really. As Weeds writes in the liner notes, the plan was to rehearse the band for two nights at Frankie's Jazz Club in Vancouver, Canada, home to Weeds and most of the band's personnel, then to convene at the Warehouse Studio on Sunday to record. Arriving at the club on Friday evening, Weeds found to his dismay that ...
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