Results for "Jack Bowers"

Jack Bowers

Ben Patterson: Push The Limits

by Jack Bowers
April 14, 2021

It took no more than a quick Google search to find that every member of trombonist Ben Patterson's quintet is (or was) also a member of the U.S. Air Force's flagship jazz ensemble, the Airmen of Note. On Push the Limits, Patterson challenges his fellow airmen to cruise through ten of his elaborate compositions and arrangements, ...

Amit Friedman: Home at Last

by Jack Bowers
April 13, 2021

Once upon a time, jazz, an American creation, was confined for the most part within its borders. But that was once upon a time. Today, any barriers that once kept jazz within a prescribed realm have long since vanished, and the music Americans once embraced as their own has flourished around the world, performed with increasing ...

Steven Feifke Big Band: Kinetic

by Jack Bowers
April 10, 2021

Jazz connoisseurs who lean toward big bands that swing as earnestly and often as the renowned architects of the epic big-band era should find plenty to cheer about on Kinetic, the debut recording by New York-based pianist, composer and arranger Steven Feifke's audacious and fiery ensemble. This is a band that fires on all cylinders—but it ...

Roberto Magris: Shuffling Ivories

by Jack Bowers
April 9, 2021

In 2018, while he was in Chicago to record his ninth album, Suite!, for JMood Records, pianist Roberto Magris was introduced by tenor saxophonist Mark Colby to bassist Eric Hochberg, an artist with whom Magris formed an almost immediate bond. After performing together at Chicago's Jazz Showcase, Magris and Hochberg decided they should record together, and ...

Lorne Lofsky: This Song Is New

by Jack Bowers
April 8, 2021

Over the years the guitar has earned a unique position in the annals of jazz. At times strident, ear-splitting and generally distasteful, at others one of the loveliest, most amiable and pleasing instruments in any circumstance, especially when placed in the capable hands of a master such as Canada's Lorne Lofsky. This is the guitar as ...

@-Quartet: ¡En Seguida!

by Jack Bowers
April 2, 2021

On ¡En Seguida!, its third album as a unit, French guitarist Didier Verna's astutely-named @-Quartet is lyrically clever and charming, rhythmically sharp and strong, and never banal or boring. One reason for this is the many bright and pleasing sounds Verna coaxes from his guitars (regular and fretless), guitar synth and sitar; a second is his ...

Jihye Lee: Daring Mind

by Jack Bowers
March 31, 2021

Korean-born composer Jihye Lee is a musician who knows her own mind, whether it be relentless, unshakable, revived, dissatisfied or Daring, as on her second recording for Motema Records. In 2018, Lee earned the prestigious BMI Charlie Parker Composition Prize for “Unshakable Mind," one of nine diverse themes presented here. Another, “I Dare You," is loosely ...

Chad Lefkowitz-Brown: Quartet Sessions

by Jack Bowers
March 24, 2021

The Quartet Sessions (there are two of them) mark the eighth recording as leader by New York-based tenor saxophonist Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, an heir-apparent to an acclaimed dynasty of hard-boppers whose monarchs include Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, Gene Ammons, Charlie Rouse, Hank Mobley, Sonny Rollins and their peers, and embraces such contemporaries as Eric Alexander, Don Menza ...

Reza Khan: Imaginary Road

by Jack Bowers
March 23, 2021

To impartially assess Imaginary Road, Bangladeshi-raised, New York-based guitarist Reza Khan's sixth album, it is best to lay aside as best one can his disposition for or against what could reasonably be labeled “smooth jazz" and start from there. Is the music melodically and rhythmically likeable? Yes, it is. Are the musicians technically able? Yes, they ...