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John Lang: Now Ear This
by Jack Bowers
For what it is, bassist John Lang's fourth album, Now Ear This, is quite well done. For jazz fans, the dilemma lies there, precisely in what it is--a series of eleven rock/fusion themes, nine written by Lang, which would be right at home on a smooth jazz/easy listening radio station, for example, but whose jazz content would earn them no more than a tenuous place on any playlist beyond that. Tempos are more or less proximate, as is the steady ...
read moreMike Holober: Hiding Out
by Angelo Leonardi
Un decennio dopo Quake (Sunnyside 2009), l'arrangiatore e bandleader Mike Holober riporta sotto i riflettori la newyorchese Gotham Jazz Orchestra in uno scintillante doppio compact che raccoglie due ricercate composizioni ("Flow" in tre movimenti, “Hiding Out" in cinque) e tre brani medio-lunghi (tra cui il delizioso “Caminhos Cruzados" di Jobim in due versioni). Come è ovvio che sia, l'organico registra alcune sostituzioni. Tra i nuovi ingressi il trombettista Marvin Stamm, i sassofonisti Jason Rigby e Bill Drewes, il ...
read moreMike Holober and the Gotham Jazz Orchestra: Hiding Out
by Jerome Wilson
Mike Holober is a celebrated composer and arranger who has worked for ensembles like the Westchester Jazz Orchestra in New York and the WDR and HR Big Bands in Germany. He is also the leader and founder of the Gotham Jazz Orchestra which here makes its first appearance on record in ten years. Holober makes this return a fruitful one, coming up with a 2CD set featuring two long suites, both with themes involving American landscapes. The first ...
read moreMike Holober and the Gotham Jazz Orchestra: Hiding Out
by Jack Bowers
Mike Holober has been Hiding Out rather openly for the past ten years or so, waiting for the proper time to gather together his world-class Gotham Jazz Orchestra and record for the first time since 2009's widely acclaimed album Quake (Sunnyside), in which his picturesque compositions and arrangements were compared favorably to those of Duke Ellington and Gil Evans, to name only two. In the interim, Holober has hardly been sitting on his hands, serving time as director of New ...
read moreMike Holober and the Gotham Jazz Orchestra: Hiding Out
by Dan Bilawsky
If musical polymath Mike Holober is hiding out, he's doing it in plain sight. Constantly in demand, his work as a pianist, conductor, arranger and composer has drawn plenty of attention. In the past 15 years alone he has served as the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Westchester Jazz Orchestra (from 2007-2013), the Associate Guest Conductor of the hr-Bigband (from 2011-2015), and the Associate Director of the BMI Jazz Composer's Workshop (from 2007-2015). In that same stretch of time, ...
read moreMike Holober and the Gotham Jazz Orchestra: Hiding Out
by Karl Ackermann
Mike Holober's background as a classical pianist and conductor is just one thing that sets Hiding Out apart from the current crop of big band releases. Holober has worked in a variety of settings from solo, duo, and quintet to large ensembles. Two previous recordings with his Gotham Jazz Orchestra were the critically acclaimed Thought Trains (Sons of Sound Records, 2004) and Quake (Sunnyside Records, 2009), comprised of covers and original Holober compositions. On the ambitious double-disc Hiding Out, Holober ...
read moreAGNZ: Chance Meeting
by Jack Bowers
Before proceeding, a word about the name of this admirable quartet: AGNZ (jazz from A to Z?) comprises the first letter in the last names of its four members--guitarist Jay Azzolina, tenor saxophonist Dino Govoni, drummer Adam Nussbaum and bassist Dave Zinno. It further denotes, presumably, a certain level of parity, a selflessness and camaraderie among equals in which the sum of their efforts is always more decisive than its component parts. Chance Meeting, the group's first ...
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