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Jazz Articles about Mike Fahie
Dan Pugach Big Band: Bianca
by Jack Bowers
Dan Pugach is an Israeli-born, New York-based drummer who doubles (quite well) as composer and arranger on Bianca, his second recording for Outside In Music. Pugach anchors a splendid big band comprised of some of the New York area's finest musicians on an album whose subtitle is Music for Paws and Persistence." The paws" were those of the Pugach family's rescue pit-bull, Bianca, who passed away in 2019 and left a gaping hole in their lives, as ...
read moreRemy Le Boeuf: Architecture of Storms
by Jack Bowers
It's hard to become bored or complacent when listening to Architecture of Storms, alto saxophonist Remy Le Boeuf's second album as leader of the twenty-member Assembly of Shadows orchestra. Every song is quite different from the others, and every one has its moments of shapeliness and charm. Le Boeuf arranged every number and composed all but Justin Vernon's Minnesota, WI" and the album's nameplate, which he co-wrote with poet Sara Pirkle, he asserts, on a brooding stormy ...
read moreDarcy James Argue's Secret Society: Dynamic Maximum Tension
by Angelo Leonardi
Precursore nel 2009 (con l'innovativo Infernal Machines) del nuovo rinascimento orchestrale nel jazz, Darcy James Argue approda all'etichetta Nonesuch e pubblica il nuovo album in studio: un doppio CD realizzato con i consueti partner della Secret Society più l'aggiunta della cantante Cecile McLorin Salvant e della violinista Sara Caswell. A differenza degli ultimi due dischi, Dynamic Maximum Tension non è un'opera multimediale ma conserva la spinta visionaria animata dalla costante riflessione socio-politica. Spinta che si traduce in ...
read moreDarcy James Argue's Secret Society: Dynamic Maximum Tension
by Katchie Cartwright
Darcy James Argue's superb double-album Nonesuch debut offers compositions written throughout his career. He turns to twentieth-century thinkers for ideas that can help us in the present, that we can reexamine and reconfigure for our own purposes." These include futurist designer Buckminster Fuller, cryptanalyst-computer scientist Alan Turing, composer-arranger Bob Brookmeyer, actress-screenwriter Mae West, trumpeter-mentor Laurie Frink, and musician-beyond-category Duke Ellington, among others. Like West, Argue seems to control his own path. He may not yet be the tycoon she was, ...
read moreRemy Le Boeuf's Assembly of Shadows: Architecture of Storms
by Angelo Leonardi
Remy Le Boeuf è uno dei nomi emergenti nell'ambito dell'arrangiamento e della conduzione orchestrale. Dopo il sorprendente Assembly of Shadows del 2019, il sassofonista e bandleader californiano (a New York dal 2004) torna con la sua orchestra irrobustita nel numero e nella qualità dei singoli componenti. Tra i nuovi ingressi troviamo in particolare il trombettista Mike Rodriguez e il sassofonista Dayna Stephens, che caratterizzano un paio di brani, anche se il lavoro di Le Boeuf è prettamente ...
read moreJihye Lee: Daring Mind
by Jack Bowers
Korean-born composer Jihye Lee is a musician who knows her own mind, whether it be relentless, unshakable, revived, dissatisfied or Daring, as on her second recording for Motema Records. In 2018, Lee earned the prestigious BMI Charlie Parker Composition Prize for Unshakable Mind," one of nine diverse themes presented here. Another, I Dare You," is loosely based on Wayne Shorter's response when asked, What is jazz?" It is a question Lee must also address, as her music is not only ...
read moreJihye Lee: Daring Mind
by Angelo Leonardi
Solo un talento eccezionale come Jihye Lee poteva ottenere risultati così brillanti e personali nel campo dell'orchestrazione jazz partendo quasi da zero. Nata a Seoul ed emigrata negli Stati Uniti da adolescente, quando s'iscrisse al Berklee College conosceva pochissimo il linguaggio musicale afro-americano e per niente la sua dimensione orchestrale. Dopo un decennio, studi di perfezionamento alla Manhattan School of Music col grande Jim McNeely (a cui va riconosciuto parte del merito) e un primo eccellente debutto (April, 2017), la ...
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