Results for "Jack Bowers"

Jack Bowers

Arthur White and Merge: When You Find It

By JACK BOWERS

Turnabout, the saying goes, is fair play. The turnabout in this case is that of saxophonist Arthur White who, after years of teaching others the precepts of jazz at the University of Missouri, Northeastern State University in Oklahoma and, most recently, as director of Jazz Studies at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, CA, decided the ...

The Claire Daly Band: Rah! Rah!

By JACK BOWERS

Award-winning baritone saxophonist Claire Daly isn't blowing her own horn on Rah! Rah! (well, she is, but more about that in a moment)—she's saluting one of her musical inspirations, the late Rahsaan Roland Kirk, a once-in-a-blue-moon talent who left us far too soon. Kirk, who lived only forty-two years, was quite literally a multi-instrumentalist, often playing ...

Howard University Jazz Ensemble: Hi-Fly

By JACK BOWERS

In 2020, the superb Howard University Jazz Ensemble from the US capital marked its forty-fifth anniversary. Since its inception in 1975, the ensemble has had only one director, Fred Irby III, its founder and guiding force for lo these many years. One year after organizing the group, Irby assembled its members for a visit to a ...

Alex Moxon Quartet: Alex Moxon Quartet

By JACK BOWERS

After gigging and teaching in his native Canada for almost two decades, guitarist Alex Moxon has recorded the first album solely under his name, and it is a well-played, mostly middle-of-the-road studio session in which his quartet may not turn any heads but should not turn anyone off either. It is simply pleasant, non-unnerving music--much of ...

South Florida Jazz Orchestra: Cheap Thrills: The Music Of Rick Margitza

By JACK BOWERS

In 2019, the acclaimed Michigan-bred, Paris-based tenor saxophonist Rick Margitza thought he was being asked to contribute a couple of charts to the University of South Florida Jazz Orchestra's fifth recording in its fifteen-year history as a working ensemble. But when SFJO founder and leader Chuck Bergeron looked at the charts he had an even better ...

Susie Meissner: I Wish I Knew

By JACK BOWERS

I wish I knew why the talented Philadelphia-based singer Susie Meissner chose to open her salute to the Great American Songbook with the only tune on the album that doesn't really qualify: Curtis Lewis' “The Great City." It's not a bad song but Cole Porter or Johnny Mandel it ain't. On the bright side, Meissner recovers ...

Jerry Cook Quartet +: A Walk in the Park

By JACK BOWERS

While some young lions can hardly wait to enter a recording studio and show the world what they have, a few older cats prefer to wait a while to make sure they get it right the first time. Veteran saxophonist Jerry Cook is one of those cats. Walk in the Park is Cook's first album under ...

The Radam Schwartz Organ Big Band: Message from Groove and GW

By JACK BOWERS

Liner notes notwithstanding, the alliance of a big band and organ is hardly unique—Jimmy Smith, Richard “Groove" Holmes and Joey DeFrancesco are organ maestros who have been there and done that; even the great Oscar Peterson once dipped his toes into that water. Having said that, organist Radam Schwartz and his power-laden New Jersey-based ensemble do ...

Trio Linguae: Signals

By JACK BOWERS

Signals introduces the snug and simpatico Trio Linguae ("lin-gwee") from western Canada whose unusual makeup (trumpet, guitar, piano) doesn't hinder it from painting a series of shapely and pleasing portraits in sound. Trumpeter Kevin Woods had been performing with his compatriots—pianist Miles Black, guitarist John Stowell—for more than a decade but never before on the same ...