Home » Jazz Musicians » Karol Hodas
Karol Hodas
Jim Rotondi: Finesse
by Jack Bowers
Finesse is trumpeter Jim Rotondi's ninth recording as a leader but his first using a full orchestra including strings. The band and string section are from Austria, where Rotondi presently lives, performs, and teaches, and each one is quite good. As for Rotondi, besides playing superb trumpet--open or muted--he wrote every song on the album save for two brief “introductory" pieces by Jakob Helling who was the arranger on every number. As if that many instruments weren't ...
read moreSwantje Lampert: Now!
by Chris May
The Austrian tenor saxophonist Swantje Lampert caught the jazz bug relatively late, while studying for a degree in law. She took up the saxophone and, some twenty years later, after graduating from the Vienna Conservatoire and the Berklee School of Music, has matured into an assured player and a characterful composer. Lampert is an experienced sideperson on the Austrian scene, but Now! appears to be the first album released under her own name. It is a collection ...
read more
