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Raul Agraz
Trombocalist Big Band: The Vigil and the Sleeping Giant
by Jack Bowers
Even those whose batting averages are high are not immune from life's unforeseen and often disastrous curve balls. Low-brass multi-instrumentalist Ron Wilkins, riding the wave as a successful musician and bandleader, learned that the hard way when he was struck by Covid in 2020 and spent more than a month in a medically induced coma with the outcome clearly in doubt. As it turns out, fortune smiled on Wilkins, and after relearning such basics as breathing normally, walking, ...
Continue ReadingThe Birdland Big Band: Storybook: The Music of Mark Miller
by Jack Bowers
Storybook, the third recording by the New York City-based Birdland Big Band, is subtitled “the music of Mark Miller" and is designed to showcase compositions and arrangements by that multi-talented artist who doubles (triples) as the band's lead trombonist. Miller wrote or co-wrote half of the album's 10 colorful and impressive numbers (11 if one counts Joaquin Rodrigo's brief “Concerto de Aranjuez," which serves as an introduction to Chick Corea's “Spain") and arranged all of them. Miller's ...
Continue ReadingRaul Agraz: Between Brothers
by Jack Bowers
Venezuelan-born and classically trained trumpeter Raul Agraz makes an impressive North American debut with Between Brothers, a vibrant album of Latin-oriented jazz whose harmonic and rhythmic quotients are about as strong and steady as one could wish. As is the case in other contexts these days, the term “brothers" is presumably used in a metaphorical sense, as there appear to be no biological brothers among Agraz's ever-changing group of sidemen that includes a guest appearance on the title song by ...
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