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Jazz Articles about Darrell Katz
About Darrell Katz
Instrument: Composer / conductor
Related Articles | Concerts | Albums | Photos | Similar ToDarrell Katz & OddSong: Galeanthropolgy
by Jerome Wilson
OddSong is a chamber ensemble led by composer Darrell Katz, and distilled from the membership of the larger JCA Orchestra. It features vibraphone, violin, saxophones and voice, on music which veers between art songs and bluesy sax-led jazz tunes. Most of Katz's original compositions on this album feature poems by his late wife, poet Paula Tatarunis, but the tracks also stretch out to include songs by Jimi Hendrix, James Taylor, Charles Mingus and Duke Ellington. Katz's original writing, ...
read moreDarrell Katz: Rats Live on No Evil Star
by Angelo Leonardi
La bostoniana Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra è un ampio organico diretto da Darrell Katz e composto da musicisti legati a vario titolo con il New England Conservatory e il Berklee College of Music. Nei suoi trent'anni di attività ha pubblicato una decina di album caratterizzati dal coniugare entro forme compositive complesse e rigorose (con molti riferimenti classici) differenti umori jazzistici. Il fulcro di ogni suo lavoro è presentare una o più opere estese, spesso delle suite, in una logica ...
read moreDarrell Katz and the JCA Orchestra: Rats Live on No Evil Star
by Jack Bowers
It's a pretty sure bet that appraising any album whose title is also a palindrome isn't going to be a stroll in the park, even more so when the orchestra in question is the Jazz Composers Alliance (rule of thumb: the longer the name, the more abstruse the music) and the instrumentation includes voice, marimba, EWI, sopranino sax and five-string violin. Such is the nature of Rats Live on No Evil Star (try reading it backward), the most recent recording ...
read moreDarrell Katz and the JCA Orchestra: Rats Live on No Evil Star
by Jerome Wilson
Listening to Darrell Katz's music, it boggles the mind that he is not celebrated as one of the best jazz composers-arrangers around. He has been creating ambitious and accessible works full of humor, social conscience and creativity for decades in the Boston area with the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra and other groups, yet you rarely hear his name. His latest, Rats Live on No Evil Star, is typical of his work, big band jazz with heavy infusions of rock, blues ...
read moreDarrell Katz and OddSong: Jailhouse Doc With Holes In Her Socks
by Angelo Leonardi
Darrell Katz è noto per la trentennale direzione della bostoniana Jazz Composers Alliance con cui ha inciso nove dischi ospitando musicisti prestigiosi come Steve Lacy, Muhal Abrams, Henry Threadgill, Sam Rivers o Tim Berne. In questo nuovo album l'orchestra (con Oliver Lake ospite) è però confinata a chiusura del lavoro, appena dopo un brano con il cameristico sestetto JCA Winds and Strings e dieci temi eseguiti dal nuovo organico denominato Oddsong. Questi è un singolare settetto formato da un quartetto ...
read moreDarrell Katz and OddSong: Jailhouse Doc With Holes In Her Socks
by Jerome Wilson
Darrell Katz has been working in Boston for over 30 years compiling an impressive body of work as leader of the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra whose music has drawn from current events, literary works and anecdotes about Charles Mingus and Albert Einstein among other sources. On this new CD he revisits several of the compositions he's written for the Orchestra with a smaller seven-piece ensemble called OddSong. The makeup of this group is four saxophones, violin ,marimba and ...
read moreDarrell Katz and the JCA Orchestra: Why Do You Ride?
by Dave Wayne
Why Do You Ride?, a sweeping, poly-stylistic orchestral paean to bicycling, Albert Einstein, a certain orange kitty cat, and wrongly-attributed quotes (among other diverse topics) is the 10th album by Darrell Katz and his Jazz Composers' Alliance (JCA) Orchestra, which is also celebrating its 30th year of existence. Unlike most jazz artists of his generation, Katz--an excellent guitarist and long-time faculty member at Boston's Berklee School of Music--has resolutely stuck with the big band as his primary means of musical ...
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