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John Yao and His 17-Piece Instrument: Flip-Flop
by Jack Bowers
Music aside, you have to love the name of this band: John Yao and His 17-Piece Instrument. Now there's confidence with a capital C! Yao, a New York City-based trombonist who arrived there from his native Chicago more than a decade ago, has more recently turned his hand to composing and arranging. Yao writes with the ...
Frank Vignola & Vinny Raniolo: Swing Zing!
by Jack Bowers
When a press release accompanying a new album conveys more information than is found on the album itself, the supposition must be that it was recorded hurriedly with an eye toward a similarly expeditious release. Swing Zing! pairs the estimable guitarists Frank Vignola and Vinny Raniolo, who've been working together for more than five years, with ...
Lars Seniuk / New German Art Orchestra: Pendulum
by Jack Bowers
German-born composer / arranger / trumpeter Lars Seniuk, who formed his first big band at age sixteen and has played with and written for many others since then, was barely twenty-six when Pendulum was recorded in Hamburg with the splendid New German Art Orchestra, an up-to-date version of the late Bob Brookmeyer's New Art Orchestra, established ...
Jason Stillman: Prelude
by Jack Bowers
Alto saxophonist Jason Stillman's Montreal-based quartet makes its recorded debut on Prelude, a sunny and engaging blend of Stillman originals and jazz standards whose spacious boundaries provide ample room for ardent blowing, especially by Stillman and pianist Josh Rager. Although the group has been a working unit for more than five years, Stillman waited until the ...
Allison Neale: I Wished on the Moon
by Jack Bowers
There was a time, roughly half a century ago, when West Coast jazz was seen as the hippest music on the planet, its leading lights known and praised far and wide for espousing a brand of “cool jazz" that stood in stark contrast to its more heated East Coast counterpart. Much like any other trend, the ...
Nils Fischer & Timbazo: Rumberos a Monton
by Jack Bowers
On Rumberos a Monton, a renowned European percussionist leads an all-star group of musicians from five Caribbean and South American countries, plus Holland, Germany and the U.S. in celebrating the music of Cuba, especially the rumba. Why can't the rest of the world come together like that? Although he hails from The Netherlands (via Germany, the ...
Edsel Gomez: Road to Udaipur
by Jack Bowers
Puerto Rican-born pianist Edsel Gomez hasn't recorded any albums as leader since his Grammy-nominated debut, Cubist Music, in 2007--he has been far too busy--but that doesn't mean he hasn't harbored such plans in the back of his mind. Now in his early 50s, Gomez decided the time was right to enter a studio again, the result ...
Marshall Gilkes / WDR Big Band: Koln
by Jack Bowers
For four years, American-born trombonist Marshall Gilkes (pronounced “Jilks") was a member of one of Germany's premier jazz ensembles, the WDR Big Band, in Cologne (Koln). One month after leaving the band in 2013, Gilkes was invited back to preside over a farewell performance at the WDR Funkhaus Studio 4, the result of which is this ...
Barney McClure: Show Me!
by Jack Bowers
While organist Barney McClure receives top billing on this exhilarating new album, he is happy to share it, for good reason, with the superlative Central Washington University Jazz Band from Ellensburg. As McClure asserts in the liner notes, “I was no more than a lucky rider on the bus." Well, a bit more than that, Barney, ...
Hugo Fernandez: Cosmogram
by Jack Bowers
Of all the instruments in a group or orchestra, none has a broader or more variable sonic profile than the guitar. When it is played properly, with earnestness and sincerity, a guitar can move the listener to tears; when it is used, however, is to elicit sounds that are best described as disquieting and cacophonous, that ...
