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Jay Rattman

Jay Rattman, a multi-instrumentalist improvisor and composer in New York City, has performed at Jazz @ Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and the Coachella Festival, in addition to appearing on NPR's Sound of Young America, WNYC's Soundcheck, The Late Show, and The Tonight Show. A recipient of an ASCAP Young Jazz Composer Award, Rattman holds bachelors and masters degrees from Manhattan School of Music, which presented him with the William H. Borden award for outstanding accomplishment in jazz. In demand in settings as diverse as traditional jazz, klezmer, big bands, free improvisations, creative jazz, and classical chamber music, he has performed or recorded with artists as disparate as Bob Dorough, Feist, Nellie McKay, Stefon Harris, and the José Limón Dance Company. A member of the klezmer band “Zlek” and Phil Woods's Festival Orchestra, he leads a jazz quartet that plays members' original music. As a member of the Manhattan Saxophone Quartet, he has premiered pieces by David Noon, Marc—Antonio Consoli, Jeffrey Nytch, and J. Mark Stambaugh among others.

Jon De Lucia: The Brubeck Octet Project Strikes Again!

Read "The Brubeck Octet Project Strikes Again!" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
October 29, 2026

There is something deeply satisfying about hearing music that has sat quietly in the shadows for decades, finally given a chance to be heard. That is the pleasure offered by alto saxophonist Jon De Lucia's The Brubeck Octet Project Strikes Again!, the second release from his acclaimed octet. More than a nostalgic return to an important period in jazz history, it also explores fresh musical territory. The cool-jazz sensibility and West Coast refinement are certainly present, but they share the ...

Album Review

Jon De Lucia: The Brubeck Octet Project Strikes Again!

Read "The Brubeck Octet Project Strikes Again!" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 25, 2026

After his recording of The Brubeck Octet Project earned widespread approval and acclaim in 2024, saxophonist and jazz historian Jon De Lucia did not rest on those laurels; instead, he delved even more deeply into the original octet's archives and unearthed eleven little-known arrangements that form the basis of a second blockbuster album, The Brubeck Octet Project Strikes Again! And what a strike it is--every inch as perceptive and impressive as De Lucia's earlier survey of the Dave Brubeck Octet, ...

Album Review

Webber/Morris Big Band: Unseparate

Read "Unseparate" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
December 8, 2025

Le sassofoniste Anna Webber e Angela Morris confermano le innovative concezioni orchestrali dimostrate in Both Are True (Greenleaf Music, 2020), con un disco ancor più avvincente, che s'impone tra i migliori dell'anno. L'organico registra pochissime variazioni (le più significativa sono l'ingresso della pianista Marta Sanchez al posto di Marc Hannaford e le assenze della vibrafonista Patricia Brennan e del trombonista Nick Grinder sostituiti rispettivamente da Yuhan Su e Zekkereya El-magharbel). L'organico è costituito dai migliori strumentisti operanti a New York ...

Album Review

Peter Lenz: Breathe

Read "Breathe" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
September 10, 2025

Dopo aver espresso ottime doti di strumentista e leader col quintetto Silent Flow e col quartetto Lithium, il batterista austriaco debutta con successo nel campo dell'orchestrazione, scegliendo di operare con tre differenti organici: una big band di 17 elementi (nei brani “Enclouded" ed “Eleanor"), una big band ampliata a un quartetto d'archi (in “Between Lines" e “Von Inneren Grenzen") ed un ensemble da camera comprendente quartetto d'archi, tre fiati, contrabbasso e batteria (in “Breathe") Volendo dirigere personalmente gli ...

Album Review

Terry Waldo & the Gotham City Band: Treasury, Volume 2

Read "Treasury, Volume 2" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 28, 2025

Like any other handiwork you can name, contemporary jazz did not emerge from a vacuum. It sprang forth from a variety of sources, including but not limited to bebop, cool jazz, swing, trad jazz (Dixieland), blues, stride and perhaps the granddaddy of them all, ragtime. Yes, ragtime. Before there was King Oliver or Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington or Woody Herman, Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson or John Coltrane, there was ragtime. And for those who surmise that ragtime ...

Album Review

Terry Waldo: Treasury Volume 1

Read "Treasury Volume 1" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
April 2, 2025

Simply stated, and without hyperbole, Terry Waldo is an American musical treasure. He's also a treasure purveyor. A protégé of and mentored by Eubie Blake, Waldo is a player, composer, arranger, author, podcaster, theatrical director, and the noted oracle for ragtime and early American popular music. With Treasury Volume 1 (the first of a three-volume set), Waldo and his all-star Gotham City Band cover ten selections from the embryonic days of American jazz.Things kick this lively session off ...

Album Review

Terry Waldo & the Gotham City Band: Treasury Volume 1

Read "Treasury Volume 1" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
December 27, 2024

Pianist Terry Waldo isn't stuck in the past; he revels in it, as do his eager teammates on Treasury, Vol. 1--the first of three such discourses, according to the album's liner notes--recorded not in jazz's primal era but in May and June 2022 (save for “After You've Gone," recorded in October 2018 with the splendid guest vocalist Veronica Swift). Waldo, a student of jazz from its origins to present-day genres, treads a well-worn path here, reprising bright and enduring themes ...

Primary Instrument

Saxophone

Location

New York City

Credentials/Background

As an educator, Rattman maintains an active private studio in addition to having taught group instrumental lessons in New York City public schools, at COTA Camp Jazz, and via distance learning from Manhattan School of Music. He also presented in a teaching artists masterclass with Yo Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble.