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UNT One O'Clock Lab Band: Lab 2021
by Jack Bowers
The University of North Texas' flagship ensemble, the One O'Clock Lab Band, has been producing annual recordings for almost half a century. It has also given rise to a veritable assembly line of world-class jazz musicians, more of whom are no doubt coming of age while honing their chops on the One O'Clock's latest album, Lab 2021. Even before the One O'Clock Band was formed in 1959, UNT had nourished such outstanding musicians as guitarists Herb Ellis ...
read moreUNT Two O'Clock Lab Band: Long Way on a Blues
by Jack Bowers
The University of North Texas, generally recognized as home to one of the world's leading undergraduate Jazz Studies programs, is essentially set apart from others by the decisive proficiency of its various Lab Bands, led by the One O'Clock and Two O'Clock ensembles (there are half a dozen others). Each band has a large number of albums under its belt, dating back several decades, the most recent of which are the One O'Clock's Lab 2021 and this one, the Two ...
read moreUNT One O'Clock Lab Band: Lab 2018, The Rhythm of the Road
by Jack Bowers
Another year, another excellent recording from the University of North Texas' flagship ensemble, the One O'Clock Lab Band, which has been producing similarly impressive albums for more than four decades. Unlike many of its predecessors, Lab 2018 has a subtitle, “The Rhythm of the Road," a nod to the band's twenty-eight concerts in a dozen cities and four states in the year leading up to the recording sessions in May 2018. As usual, the music and musicianship are beyond reproach; ...
read moreUniversity of North Texas: Anniversary Package; Lab 2017
by Jack Bowers
To mark the seventieth anniversary of its establishment, the Division of Jazz Studies at the University of North Texas in Denton has issued superb CD compilations honoring four of its distinguished educators / bandleaders in addition to Lab 2017 by the university's flagship One O'Clock Lab Band, the fiftieth annual recording by that widely celebrated ensemble. The compilations, consisting of ten CDs in all, salute former faculty stalwarts Neil Slater, Jim Riggs and Jay Saunders along with present faculty member ...
read moreThe UNT One O'Clock Lab Band: Lab 2016
by Jack Bowers
The year ending in May 2016 was quite an eventful time for the University of North Texas' flagship One O'Clock Lab Band. Besides hosting regular concerts and clinics in Denton and the surrounding area and holding its three yearly performances in Fort Worth, the band welcomed acclaimed drummer Dennis Mackrel as guest artist for its fall concert, the superb pianist Danilo Perez in the spring, and crowned the year with a trip to Australia to perform with the jazz world's ...
read moreUNT One O'Clock Lab Band: Lab 2015
by Jack Bowers
Jay Saunders, director of the University of North Texas' flagship ensemble, the One O'Clock Lab Band, sums up the group's latest recording, Lab 2015, in one concise and canny sentence: “Sometimes it's best just to let the band play what they want to play." With that in mind, Saunders writes in the album's liner notes, he “threw the keys" to the band, its arrangers and composers and told them “to write anything they wanted." From twenty-three submissions, the members of ...
read moreUNT Two O'Clock Lab Band: Two Music: It Don't Mean a Thing, If It...
by Jack Bowers
As has been pointed out a number of times before, there's no audible difference between the University of North Texas' One O'Clock and Two O'Clock Lab Bands, which are customarily named for rehearsal times but based on performance alone could well be designated One O'Clock and One-Fifteen. This is not meant to devalue the One O'Clock Band, which is about as proficient as a college-level ensemble can be; the intention is simply to note that UNT is home to a ...
read moreUNT One O'Clock Lab Band: Lab 2014
by Jack Bowers
Another year, another anthology of stellar big-band jazz from the University of North Texas' flagship ensemble, the One O'Clock Lab Band, which carries on a tradition of annual recordings that was begun more than four decades ago. It's a custom that has not only served the university well but has produced a long and unbroken series of splendid large-ensemble albums, and Lab 2014 is clearly no exception to that rule. To declare that Lab 2014 is superior ...
read moreUniversity of North Texas One O'Clock Lab Band: Lab 2013
by Jack Bowers
The University of North Texas is situated in Denton, a city of roughly 120,000 less than an hour's drive northwest from Dallas / Fort Worth. To students at UNT as well as its year-round residents, Denton is home, even if in the former case a home away from home. And speaking of home, the university is home to the country's oldest and most celebrated Jazz Studies program, anchored by the superlative One O'Clock Lab Band whose members are special and ...
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