Articles by Jack Bowers
Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.
The DIVA Jazz Orchestra: DIVA + the Boys
After more than twenty-five years as one of the world's most renowned big bands, drummer Sherrie Maricle's superlative all-female DIVA Jazz Orchestra invited a quartet of “the boys" onboard to help ensure the ensemble's twelfth album's success. Even though DIVA needs no consorts to affirm its unremitting mastery, it is nonetheless pleasurable to witness these talented women sharing the stage and blowing up a storm with such esteemed guest artists as clarinetist Ken Peplowski, trombonist Jay Ashby and (it hurts ...
read moreStan Kenton and His Orchestra: A Kenton Trilogy, Part 1: Dance Time
Better late than never. Having already appraised Part 2 of Sounds of Yesteryear's three-part salute to the Stan Kenton Orchestra, it seemed only proper that the same should be done (albeit out of order) for Part 1 (and Part 3 as well, whenever it is released). Unlike Part 2, which is devoted to the artistry of four members of the orchestra (saxophonists Lee Konitz and Pepper Adams, vocalist Ann Richards, mellophonium master Ray Starling), Part 1 consists of themes from ...
read moreUniversity of Toronto Jazz Orchestra: Embargo
Talk about setting the bar high: on an album designed to showcase the talents of students in Professor Terry Promane's classes on arranging, the University of Toronto Jazz Orchestra's music director, Gordon Foote, chose to open Embargo with Rob McConnell's classic arrangement of the Billy Strayhorn warhorse, “Take the 'A' Train," thus giving the undergrads a formidable target at which to aim. Does their aim prove true? Beyond any doubt. The lone wayward shot occurs on the ...
read moreNick Fraser / Kris Davis / Tony Malaby: Zoning
What can be said in a positive vein about Zoning, an essentially inward-leaning and dissonant exercise in avant-garde or “free" jazz by drummer Nick Fraser, pianist Kris Davis and saxophonist Tony Malaby (supported on three numbers by tenor Ingrid Laubrock and trumpeter Lina Allemano). Well, it is music, of a sort—and it is (largely) improvised, or appears to be, which places it somewhere in the inclusive jazz sphere. And despite its often chaotic and generally unmelodious contours, the music's interpreters ...
read moreRalph Peterson: Listen Up!
As on its debut album, I Remember Bu, drummer / educator Ralph Peterson's Gen-Next Big Band, composed for the most part of students at Boston's Berklee College of Music, pays tribute on Listen Up! to one of Peterson's mentors, the late great Art Blakey, known far and wide as the longtime leader and sparkplug of the peerless Jazz Messengers. And as before, the band powers its way through nine formidable charts, half a dozen written by Messengers alumni and two ...
read moreSam Newbould Quintet: Blencathra
Blencathra, the debut album from British-born, Amsterdam-based saxophonist Sam Newbould's quintet, presents half a dozen of the leader's forward-leaning compositions and arrangements whose general point of view may be subdued, at times veering toward melancholy, but is never less than engaging. One of Newbould's strengths, even when the music is leisurely and pensive, lies in his ability to fully engage every member of the quintet in the ardent expression of its finer points. In other words, the group dynamic is ...
read moreStan Kenton: A Kenton Trilogy, Part 2 / The Sound of Jazz
The Sound of Jazz by the legendary Stan Kenton Orchestra follows Part 1 of a Kenton Trilogy, Dance Time, and hopefully precedes a third component yet to be named. Although Kenton has been gone for more than forty years (he died in August 1979), he has hardly been forgotten, with reissues of concert and studio sessions by the orchestra appearing on what seems to be a fairly regular basis. In this case, the album is divided roughly into four parts, ...
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