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Peter Hand: Blue Topaz
by Jack Bowers
Peter Hand has a hand in almost everything on Blue Topaz, playing masterful guitar, writing seven of the album's ten engaging numbers and arranging all of them. He also spliced together a pair of blue-chip ensembles for his first small-group recording after three well-received big-band albums, and invited his longtime friend--and legendary tenor saxophonist--Houston Person to sit in on two tracks. Person had also guested on one of the guitarist's big-band recordings, Out of Hand (2014). Hand's ...
read moreSchapiro 17: Human Qualities
by Jack Bowers
Following its splendid premiere recording, an exploration of Miles Davis' unrivaled album Kind Of Blue (Capitol Records, 1959), composer/arranger Jon Schapiro's 17-member ensemble broadens its horizons on Human Qualities, pairing seven of the maestro's astute and adventurous charts with the Roberta Flack best-seller, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." This time around, Schapiro proves that he need rely on nothing more than his own considerable experience as a jazz artist to create an album that expresses his point ...
read moreSchapiro 17: New Shoes: Kind of Blue at 60
by Jerome Wilson
Miles Davis' album Kind Of Blue (Columbia, 1959) is the best-selling jazz album of all time and has been highly influential for the last 60 years. Most of its five tracks have become jazz standards and have been interpreted time and again. However it is rare to see the entire album reworked to the extent that Jon Schapiro and his big band, Schapiro 17, do here. The tracks undergo extensive retooling, expanding into big band arrangements that carry on the ...
read moreSchapiro 17: New Shoes: Kind of Blue at 60
by Jack Bowers
2019 marked the sixtieth anniversary of the Miles Davis sextet's acclaimed album, Kind of Blue (Columbia). While the tributes didn't exactly pour in, New York-based composer / arranger Jon Schapiro took it upon himself not only to revisit that classic session but to re-orchestrate it for a large ensemble (the Schapiro 17) and flesh it out with half a dozen compositions of his own and another by pianist Roberta Piket. In keeping with the spirit of the occasion, all of ...
read moreEddie Allen: Push
by Everett R. Davis
Seasoned trumpeter, composer and educator Eddie Allen's highly awaited Push is a mix of mainstream jazz with generous sprinklings of urban flavors and reggae thrown into the mix. Allen and the excellent group of musicians he assembled for this release is simply riveting, with pure jazz and catchy flowing rhythms from start to finish. Allen states that the goal of this project was simply to create some good, “fun to listen to music." The album opens with ...
read moreGroove's Mood: The Aggregation
by AAJ Italy Staff
Eddie Allen è un marpione, nel senso buono del termine. Suona la tromba, compone e insegna jazz. Si diverte a metter su quartetti, quintetti e una big band di 17 elementi, The Aggregation, capace di guardare allo swing più puro ("Groove's Mood"), ma anche ai riverberi latino americani. Aggregare per lui è segno di non solo di un perfetto interplay con i tantissimi musicisti che lo circondano, ma anche e soprattutto con l'ascoltatore che lui vuole, senza mezzi termini, coinvolgere ...
read moreThe Aggregation, Under the Direction of Eddie Allen: Groove's Mood
by Edward Blanco
Trumpeter, composer, educator and band leader Eddie Allen is a very busy New York artist currently leading a quartet, quintet, a Latin/Brazilian group and the seventeen-piece big band, The Aggregation, the latter debuting with Groove's Mood. Allen which claims to have one goal: “To have the listener in a finger-snappin,' head bobbin,' toe-tappin,' feel good mood from beginning to end." With ten pieces of blues, samba, and shuffle to ballad, spiritual and R& B classics, including instrumentals as well as ...
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