Jazz Articles
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Jon Gordon: Stranger Than Fiction
by Hrayr Attarian
Saxophonist Jon Gordon's superb 13th release as a leader, Stranger Than Fiction, consists of 10 cinematic and captivating originals. Gordon leads a large ensemble of mostly Canadian musicians through his vibrantly textured compositions. The focus is more on dynamic interplay of different band members and orchestral segments than on individual expressions. There are, however, brilliantly virtuosic soloists who seamlessly emerge out of these vividly ebullient works making them even more electrifyingly alive. Opening with delightfully dissonant staccato woodwinds ...
read moreAndy Farber and His Orchestra: Early Blue Evening
by Jack Bowers
Saxophonist Andy Farber's New York-based orchestra came together and cut its teeth as the onstage band for three hundred performances of After Midnight, a Broadway revue that paid tribute to Jazz Age nightclub luminaries from Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford and Count Basie to Harold Arlen, Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh. As one might presume from the orchestra's provenance, echoes of Ellington and Basie can readily be discerned on its first recording since After Midnight closed in 2014--but Farber, who wrote ...
read moreJon Gordon: Stranger Than Fiction
by Jack Bowers
New York-bred alto saxophonist Jon Gordon has come a long way since he was hailed as something of a prodigy in the mid-1980s and earned first place in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition in 1996. The music performed by Gordon's nonet on Stranger Than Fiction, we are told, “reflects [his] realization that reality takes twists and turns [that are] far more unpredictable than any author would dare write." There are indeed many twists and turns—most ...
read moreMaria Schneider: Data Lords
by Pat Youngspiel
Well someone doesn't seem too happy with the digital world. But that's nothing new for Maria Schneider. The Grammy-award winning composer and bandleader has been an outspoken critic of copyright abuses in the digital and streaming world of music for the biggest part of the last decade. On her newest effort, she sets her justified quarrels with the industry to music by juxtaposing the cold world of ones and zeroes, comprised on the first CD titled “The Digital World," in ...
read moreMaria Schneider Orchestra: Data Lords
by Jerome Wilson
Composer Maria Schneider has long been writing and speaking about the dangers of the omnipresent digital universe, intellectual property theft, gathering and manipulation of personal data by big tech companies, the unchecked proliferation of false and misleading material, and so on. Those concerns form the basis of her latest musical project, Data Lords, a 2 CD set examining the conflicting realities of the digital and real worlds. The two CDs are labeled “The Digital World" and “Our Natural ...
read moreMaria Schneider: Data Lords
by Doug Hall
Maria Schneider, jazz pianist, orchestral composer and 2019 NEA Jazz Master, has just released a new double-album, Data Lords (artistShare, 2020), which creates poignant musical imagery about our data-driven world. Schneider, who has been an active advocate for musicians' rights and copyright, has followed-on this impact, citing “big data" companies as manipulators of music, culture and privacy. This collection of uniquely and emotionally rendered original compositions addresses the conflicting relationships between the digital and natural worlds, featuring Schneider's orchestra of ...
read moreDave Pietro: Hypersphere
by Paul Rauch
You may not know the name Dave Pietro offhand, but it is likely, if you are a jazz fan of any sort, that you have heard him play. As a saxophone/woodwind artist, composer, educator, sideman, and bandleader, he has performed across a broad spectrum of projects since his becoming a mainstay on the New York scene in 1987. That aspect of his career has enabled a sizable skill set that transfers over into his personal projects. His compositional ...
read moreMaria Schneider Orchestra: Data Lords
by Karl Ackermann
The skillfully designed cover art tells part of the story; a leaf--half as nature intended--the remainder, a circuit board doppelganger. The pastoral soundscapes associated with the music of Grammy-winning composer/bandleader Maria Schneider belie her activist alter-ego. An outspoken critic of copyright protections, prejudicial revenue schemes and the abuses of “big data," Schneider has authored op-eds and testified before the US Congress. She ventures onto unfamiliar terrain, coalescing her passions on a masterwork double album, Data Lords. The two ...
read moreSpanish Harlem Orchestra: The Latin Jazz Project
by Mark Sullivan
When last heard from, the salsa powerhouse Spanish Harlem Orchestra was celebrating fifteen years of playing together with Anniversary (ArtistShare, 2018). There have always been elements of Latin jazz in the group's music, and Artistic Director Oscar Hernández is a noted Latin jazz pianist, so it was only a matter of time until they presented a full program of it. In addition to his arrangements, Hernández contributed several compositions, and is a prominent soloist. The band contains some ...
read morePatricia Barber: Higher
by Tyran Grillo
Patricia Barber is more than the sum of her talents. As a composer, she peels back the craft of song to expose its barest textures, cultivating each like a tree that, while holding its own shape above ground, makes apparent the roots below it. As a singer, she understands not only that we perform our voices but also that our voices perform us. Whether crooning through the Great American Songbook, as on Nightclub (Blue Note, 2000), or rowing through intensely ...
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