Jazz Articles
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Chris Mondak: Blank With Colour
by Richard J Salvucci
Chris Mondak is a fine, NEC-trained bassist who works in a variety of genres. But this recording really has him in a secondary role, as part of the rhythm section of what must be a version of his working band. The band is good; funky from soft to shout, turn up the volume. Dan Hitchcock's lead sax voice is strong throughout, and Jack Macklin and Gabe Feldman work very well with him. The rhythm section is terrific and provides the ...
read moreThe Stan Kenton Legacy Orchestra: The Stage Door Still Swings (And Movies Too)
by Nicholas F. Mondello
Since around 2001, noted trumpeter Mike Vax has periodically assembled an extraordinarily talented group of former members of the Stan Kenton's, Maynard Ferguson's and other elite bands and led that crew on short performance tours (and clinics) around various sections of the United States. While an alum group and not a “ghost band," their repertoire is heavily dominated by material made famous by the Kenton Orchestra. This 15 selection compilation is sourced from highlight performances during that near quarter century ...
read moreThe Scott Whitfield Jazz Orchestra West: Postcards from Hollywood
by Jack Bowers
While many people have been excited or enraptured by the music scores accompanying Hollywood's most beloved films, few know (or perhaps even care) who wrote them. That's a shame, as these composers (and their contemporaries) were musical trailblazers whose names should be enshrined forever in the annals of artistic brilliance. One who does care is composer/arranger Scott Whitfield who has dedicated the latest album by his Jazz Orchestra West, Postcards from Hollywood, to their remarkable (and too-often overlooked) legacy.
read moreChris Mondak: Glass Spheres
by Kyle Simpler
Until now, bassist Chris Mondak has been impressing only live audiences. With his album debut, Glass Spheres, he hopes to connect with a wider audience. Mondak's life has been far from ordinary. He was born in Venezuela and raised in Illinois. While in high school, he was awarded Illinois All-State Musician three times and received numerous other honors. Later, he earned a Bachelor of Music degree at The New England Conservatory of music, where he studied with Dave Holland and ...
read moreChris Mondak: Glass Spheres
by Edward Blanco
The 24-year-old Venezuelan-born bassist and composer Chris Mondak presents his latest recording of exciting new jazz on the varied Glass Spheres, offering an intriguing and absorbing selection of originals that explores a range of styles from swing, pop and bebop to avant-garde. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, Mondak and his band have become a regular feature in Nashville's burgeoning jazz scene after a brief history of performing in venues from Cleveland to Chicago and New York as well as internationally including ...
read moreCharged Particles: Live at the Baked Potato!
by Mark Sullivan
The late tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker was held in the highest regard by fellow saxophonists, while at the same time being seen as far too eclectic to be part of the jazz pantheon (due in no small part to his sideman work in rock and pop). This album focuses on Brecker as composer, spanning three decades of his work, and honoring his performance practice as well. There was no attempt to recreate his legendary chops, but the group was careful ...
read moreDominican Jazz Project: Desde Lejos
by Chris M. Slawecki
DJP's primary composer and keyboard player Stephen Anderson has worked to get the DJP back into the studio after their 2016 Dominican Jazz Project (Summit Records) debut received so much critical and popular acclaim. The 2020 pandemic and attendant lockdowns delayed but did not cancel this follow-up, which the band recorded Desde Lejos--"From Afar." Primarily composed by Anderson in his COVID “compositional woodshed" (his term for lockdown) plus two ballads by singer-guitarist Carlos Luis, Desde Lejos remains true ...
read moreLukasz Pawlik: Long Distance Connections
by Jim Worsley
This is fusion of the highest order, the type of project that is easy to get excited about. The complexities of Polish composer, pianist, cellist and arranger Lukasz Pawlik's compositions soar to new heights on his second album as a leader. Enlisting gold-star talent from both home and abroad, this amounts to about a fifty-fifty configuration of prominent musicians from the United States and Poland. Fusion legends trumpeter Randy Brecker and electric guitarist Mike Stern unite with Polish heavyweights tenor ...
read moreRebecca DuMaine: Someday, Something
by Richard J Salvucci
It is odd that Rebecca DuMaine should have chosen “Alone Again (Naturally)" to decorate a pandemic-influenced recording. Quite a few musicians have, almost perforce, referred to the circumstances of the Covid months, but this song can be oddly compelling for someone who remembers the contrasting emotional environment in which it was recorded in 1972. It was about personal loss, and powerfully so, but certainly not about widespread disappearances, a modern version of a plague year. DuMaine's matter-of-fact delivery here is ...
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 ...
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