Jazz Articles about Pedro Giraudo

Mike Fahie Jazz Orchestra: Urban(e)

by Dan Bilawsky
October 23, 2020

There's a rocky history surrounding jazz-classical hybrids. But, in truth, that has little to do with any potential incompatibility. Instead, it's usually misguided maneuvering and/or an excessive show of dominant traits from one side or the other that mars said unions. When done right a wedding of those worlds can truly birth brilliance. Just listen to Urban(e) for proof. Noted trombonist, composer, arranger and educator Mike Fahie's unabashed love for classical music and jazz is clear and ...

Mike Fahie Jazz Orchestra: Urban(e)

by Jack Bowers
August 5, 2020

Most Western music, irrespective of its origin and premise, inhabits the same harmonic, chordal and rhythmic universe. So it should not be surprising that classical music, in the hands of a skilled arranger, can be readily recast in a jazz idiom, even one that is housed within a big-band framework. On Urban(e), trombonist Mike Fahie's New York-based Jazz Orchestra braves that challenge, quickening Fahie's translations of works by Frederic Chopin, Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, Bela Bartok, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky and ...

Pedro Giraudo Big Band: Cuentos

by Jack Bowers
March 25, 2015

Cuentos, the sixth recording by Argentine-born, New York-based composer / arranger / bassist Pedro Giraudo and his first as leader of a fully formed large ensemble, is a rhythmic delight, deftly interweaving the best of Giraudo's South American heritage with contemporary big-band jazz of the highest order. Giraudo wrote and arranged every number, on each of which the irrepressible harmonies and cadences of his homeland play an essential role. Much of the music is thematic, from the ...

Pedro Giraudo Jazz Orchestra: Cordoba

by Dan Bilawsky
May 26, 2011

Córdoba is the name of an Argentinean province--and its capital city--but it's even more than that to bassist-composer Pedro Giraudo, whose Córdoba is a wonderful confluence of rural and urban elements, folkloric rhythmic traditions and modern writing for large ensemble. Giraudo grew up in Córdoba, and the hustle and bustle of the city's atmosphere is certainly on display in his music, but that's only half of the picture. He spent his summers living a simpler life in the countryside and ...

Pedro Giraudo Jazz Orchestra: El Viaje

by Jim Santella
April 5, 2009

Bassist Pedro Giraudo has created an excellent program of tone poems that come alive through his 12-piece orchestra. Dedicated to his wife and infant daughter, most of the compositions relate his feelings on becoming a father and assuming new responsibilities. He explains in his liner notes that the event was a major turning point in his life, with many ups and downs, giving him emotional twists he describes through the dissonance of a trombone, lyricism from a tenor saxophone, staccato ...

The Pedro Giraudo Jazz Orchestra Premieres "Campo"

by Eric Benson
March 13, 2009

Pedro Giraudo Jazz Gallery New York, NY March 6, 2009

Big band jazz is an out-of-date form, its heyday having come in the boom-and-bust interwar years, and any modern-day revival must grapple with its inherent anachronism. Some current big bands try to ignore their historical awkwardness, employing the form simply as a larger musical canvas. These groups tend to be, at their core, quartets or quintets with reinforcements, post-bop combos with a few ...