Michael Jenner

Garth Alper: Stratus

by Edward Blanco
August 11, 2017

The fourth album as leader from pianist Garth Alper, Stratus, is a nine-piece musical portrait painted on a canvas of seven original colors and two re-imagined standards designed in the good ol' fashioned straight-ahead tradition. Dr. Alper, coordinator of Jazz Studies at the University of Louisiana (UL) in Lafayette, draws on a handful of faculty members at UL, in creating a very formidable quintet that provides “their own artistic insights" into crafting and producing the album. The result, of course, ...