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Metropolitan Jazz Octet: The Bowie Project
by Paul Reynolds
A tribute to a pop artist by jazz musicians--as with the new David Bowie album by Chicago's Metropolitan Jazz Octet--has to tread a careful line. It obviously won't--can't--be a rote reproduction of the originals, a flaw that sinks many pop-to-pop tributes. Yet it needs to translate the songs into jazz--its harmonic sophistication, especially--in a way that retains the essence of the artist being celebrated. The MJO effort deftly rises to that challenge. This 11-song project should intrigue Bowieists ...
read moreMetropolitan Jazz Octet featuring Paul Marinaro: The Bowie Project
by Neil Tesser
In the words of David Bowie: “Changes." The Metropolitan Jazz Octet's two previous albums teem with unadulterated jazz. Paul Marinaro is a hard-swinging, expressive baritone steeped in the Great American Songbook and the jazz tradition. So what in the galaxy are they doing with the music of pop legend--and onetime glam rocker, dancehall king, visual visionary, music man of multiple personae, and cultural icon--David Bowie? Historians might note that Bowie started playing jazz saxophone in his ...
read moreJoshua Jern Jazz Orchestra: Midnight Stroll
by Jack Bowers
One can only imagine how difficult it must be, especially in such uncertain times, for any musician to decide that the time has come to assemble a big band and usher it into a recording studio, let alone one whose name and reputation are, more than likely, scarcely known outside his own neighborhood. Thumbing his nose at the odds, Joshua Jern, a Chicago-based trumpeter and educator with impressive talents, has done exactly that, escorting his remarkably well-groomed ensemble on a ...
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