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The Beijbom Kroner Big Band: Tango for Bad People
by Jack Bowers
Under the proper circumstances (and these certainly are), there is no more chromatic and charming music than the tango, popularized in Argentina and around the world by the great Astor Piazzolla. One would hardly expect a big band comprised almost exclusively of Swedes and Danes to be among its leading exponents, but there you have it. ...
The Howard University Jazz Ensemble: HUJE 2003
by Jack Bowers
The Howard University Jazz Enemble has been recording once every year almost since its inception in 1975, invariably producing albums that are sharp and persuasive, and HUJE 2003 is certainly no exception. While the personnel changes from season to season, as it does in any university-level band, the one constant is director Fred Irby III, who ...
John MacMurchy: Outside the Ministry of Truth
by Jack Bowers
It’s true that one can almost never judge a book—or an album—by its cover. In fact, when it comes to recordings, one shouldn’t even try, as nothing apart from the music is of any consequence. As Exhibit A, I would offer Outside the Ministry of Truth by Canadian saxophonist John MacMurchy’s quintet. The title is hardly ...
Jazz Festival Puts Wigan (Almost) on the Map
by Jack Bowers
There’s not much to write about this month but I must let you know about the Wigan International Jazz Festival, which keeps getting bigger and better with each passing year. Wigan, which as near as I can figure is somewhere in the neighborhood of Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester or perhaps all three in Merrie Olde England, is ...
The Scott Whitfield Jazz Orchestra East: Live at Birdland
by Jack Bowers
Note to myself: file this album under “P” for “Pleasant Surprises.” I must confess that I knew nothing about Scott Whitfield except that he plays trombone, so I had no idea what to expect from his Jazz Orchestra East, whose concert performance at New York City’s Birdland night spot was recorded on Whitfield’s fortieth birthday, March ...
Peter Brem: Peter Brem BIG Band / I Knew Orla Leans
by Jack Bowers
In March I reviewed Natural Connections, the second album by composer/arranger Peter Brem’s superb Denmark-based big band. Herewith the first of its albums, recorded in March ’98, and the most recent, I Knew Orla Leans, from December ‘01, featuring the well-known Danish pianist Carsten Dahl. Brem wrote and scored everything on both albums except for Dahl’s ...
Eric Nemeyer: Blessing in Disguise
by Jack Bowers
Eric Nemeyer, who edits Jazz Improv, a superlative quarterly magazine for which I've written a number of reviews, is also a musician (vibraphone division) and sent this album as a thank-you, entirely for my own listening pleasure. Surely he didn't think he'd make a clean getaway without braving a review of some sort... First of all, ...
Zoot Sims with the Joe Castro Trio: Live at Falcon Lair
by Jack Bowers
This loose-limbed rendezvous sounds exactly as it was, an impromptu late-night jam session planned on the fly in someone’s apartment—in this case, however, no ordinary apartment but “The Playhouse,” a spacious second-story room above a garage and adjacent to the main house at Falcon Lair, the imposing Beverly Hills estate then owned by tobacco heiress Doris ...
Chet Baker: Plays the Best of Lerner and Loewe
by Jack Bowers
There’s some nice blowing on this CD reissue of an album recorded in 1959 by trumpeter Chet Baker and a star-studded supporting cast, but it’s far too sporadic, flutist Herbie Mann’s arrangements are generally uninspiring, and the session is on the whole rather lackluster. In searching for reasons, one that quickly arises is that Baker's celebrated ...
The Kerry Strayer Septet: Mentor
by Jack Bowers
It takes years to learn to play jazz as well as Kerry Strayer does, and one always needs a mentor —perhaps several—to help him (or her) reach such a lofty plateau. Gary Foster, among the West Coast’s best and busiest reed masters, is one of Kansas City-based composer/arranger/saxophonist Strayer’s most influential teachers, and it is Foster ...
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