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Ed Thigpen Rhythm Features: The Element of Swing
by Jack Bowers
I needn’t tell you what a great drummer Ed Thigpen is; others more eloquent than I have done so on many occasions, and your own ears can validate their appraisal simply by listening to the master at work, as he is on The Element of Swing, recorded in concert by Thigpen’s excellent trio, Rhythm Features, with ...
Fredrik Lundin Overdrive: Choose Your Boots
by Jack Bowers
Fredrik Lundin’s Choose Your Boots is best described as “rock–Jazz,” generally well–played but encumbered along the way by musically prefabricated special effects and funky rhythms that lend the enterprise a “retro–’70s” ambiance. What it lacks is a clear center of gravity or personality, if you will, that would serve to tie its various ingredients together. Lundin ...
Dave Liebman / Don Braden / Dan Moretti: Latin Genesis
by Jack Bowers
Latin Genesis, Dave Liebman writes in the liner notes, marks the thirtieth anniversary of a groundbreaking session in which he took part with drummer Elvin Jones, bassist Gene Perla and saxophonists Joe Farrell and Frank Foster. This time around, the front line consists of Liebman, Don Braden and Dan Moretti, all doubling on soprano and tenor ...
The Mike Vax Jazz Orchestra: bigbandjazz.net
by Jack Bowers
Trumpeter Mike Vax has come up with an interesting idea, using his latest album to promote the web site bigbandjazz.net, which in turn promotes the Oakland, CA–based non–profit group Friends of Big Band Jazz (FBBJ), whose worthy goal is to help keep big–band Jazz alive for future generations. FBBJ supports and promotes performances by the MVJO, ...
The Bob Brookmeyer New Art Orchestra: Waltzing with Zoe
by Jack Bowers
Spectacular. There’s no other way to describe “Seesaw,” the opening number on the second album by Bob Brookmeyer’s German–based New Art Orchestra. A shame the Grammy Awards don’t include one for best big–band composition (even though there is a ludicrous prize for “best Jazz solo”), as “Seesaw” would win the honor going away. The highest compliment ...
The Whitworth College Jazz Ensembles: 1998-99, 1999-2000: Blues in My Shoes
by Jack Bowers
Our second encounter with the award–winning Whitworth College Jazz Ensemble from lovely Spokane, WA, leaves no doubt as to why the school’s Jazz Studies program has been praised by Jazz Times magazine as one of the country’s best. The ensemble’s fourth album, Blues in My Shoes, encompasses nearly sixty–nine minutes of formidable big–band Jazz, ably supervised ...
The Howard University Jazz Ensemble: HUJE 2001
by Jack Bowers
Another year, another marvelous CD by the Howard University Jazz Ensemble, continuing a tradition that began in 1976, one year after the ensemble was established by Fred Irby III who remains its director. As usual, Irby draws inspiration from a broad variety of sources with compositions by Thelonious Monk, Wayne Shorter and Billy Strayhorn rubbing shoulders ...
The Jeff Barash Quartet: Bouncin' on 160th Avenue
by Jack Bowers
Saxophonist Jeff Barash, who lists among his influences a number of the usual suspects — Rollins, Getz, Stitt, Turrentine and even Trane — sounds not much like any of them but (on tenor, at least) rather like a cross between Harry Allen and Spike Robinson with swatches of Eddie Harris and Joe Henderson enhancing the wardrobe. ...
The DePaul University Jazz Ensemble: American Express
by Jack Bowers
DePaul University’s Jazz Studies program, always a good one, has really hit its stride in the past couple of years with a number of superlative albums by the Jazz Ensemble under director Bob Lark, the most recent of which is this invigorating concert with the renowned composer / valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer taped in May ‘01 ...
Raul Romero and His Jazz Stars Orchestra: Moon Trip 2000, 2nd Edition
by Jack Bowers
As the late Raul Romero is one of my favorite unsung big–band composer / arrangers, it saddens me to report that the second edition of Moon Trip 2000 by his Jazz Stars Orchestra is notably less pleasing than the first, which was reviewed about a year or so ago. The fault lies not with the music ...
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