Home » Search Center » Results: Jack Bowers

Results for "Jack Bowers"

195

Article: Album Review

Hans Ulrik: Jazz & Latin Beats

by Jack Bowers
October 1, 2001

Jazz & Latin Beats is a follow–up to Copenhagen–born saxophonist Hans Ulrik’s Jazz and Mambo, which won a Danish Grammy Award as “Jazz Album of the Year” in 1998. This is another strong outing, even though the “Latin beats” are always subordinated to the Jazz and in some cases (“Gone with the Wind,” “The Man I ...

171

Article: Album Review

The Charlie Shoemake Trios: Lands End

by Jack Bowers
October 1, 2001

Talk about your talents deserving wider recognition. Vibraphonist Charlie Shoemake, now in his 60s, has been making beautiful music for more than forty–five years but is almost unknown (except to musicians) beyond his home base in southern California. Perhaps this splendid bop–based album may help change that. Shoemake, a first–call studio musician on the Hollywood / ...

103

Article: Album Review

The Big Band Brass Featuring Rob McConnell: Live with the Boss

by Jack Bowers
October 1, 2001

Have you ever been to a concert where the band was blowin’ up a storm but the cavernously richocheting acoustics were enough to drive you crazy? If so, you’ll readily identify with this album, a marvelous collaboration between Rob McConnell and the Toulouse–based Big Band Brass that cooks from the word go but is repeatedly sabotaged ...

386

Article: Album Review

The Les Hooper Big Band: Look What They've Done / Dorian Blue / Raisin' the Roof / Anything Goes

by Jack Bowers
October 1, 2001

Here’s an unexpected but no less welcome windfall for big–band lovers. Composer / arranger / pianist Les Hooper has reissued four of his superb albums from the ’70s and ’80s on compact disc, the first two featuring his excellent Chicago–based group, the others an all–star West Coast ensemble. If you appreciate a big band that swings ...

232

Article: Album Review

Tom Harrell: Paradise

by Jack Bowers
October 1, 2001

Tom Harrell knows a lovely melody when he hears one, and has written several on his new album, Paradise, an ambitious enterprise that must have been a labor of love, as it is unlikely to earn the sort of recognition (Grammy Award nomination, etc.) he garnered with last year’s big–band release, Time’s Mirror. Which is not ...

Article: Album Review

The Jeff Hellmer Trio: Peak Moments

by Jack Bowers
October 1, 2001

The album’s subtitle is “Featuring Rick Margitza,” and the fiery Trane tracker is very much in the thick of things on this strapping post–bop session, blowing passionately on tenor (seven selections) or soprano sax (“All the Things You Are”). Margitza takes a well–earned break only on the finale, a splendid reading by Hellmer’s trio of Leonard ...

142

Article: Album Review

The Mads Vinding Trio: Six Hands, Three Minds, One Heart

by Jack Bowers
October 1, 2001

As the album’s title indicates, any member of this near–clairvoyant trio could be its nominal leader, as the three work together like a well–oiled machine throughout this marvelous session, recorded live in June ’99 at the Jazzhouse in Copenhagen, Denmark. But bassist Vinding has worked before in trio settings with award–winning drummer Riel (in fact, they’ve ...

206

Article: Album Review

The Omaha Big Band: Swing This!

by Jack Bowers
October 1, 2001

July and August aren’t the only things that are hot in Nebraska. The Omaha Big Band produces some sparks of its own on Swing This!, a scorching debut album that finds the 17–member ensemble swinging lustily through a tasteful program of Jazz standards and contemporary charts. The band is obviously well–rehearsed and ready, and there’s little ...

132

Article: Album Review

Megan West: Swingin' Big Band

by Jack Bowers
October 1, 2001

Here’s a generous helping of Nouveau Swing from drummer Megan West’s California–based big band, which at least partly recoups in enthusiasm what it lacks in other areas, specifically precision. West, who has been playing drums since age twelve, formed her first band as long ago as 1975 and put the present group together last year. She ...

175

Article: Album Review

The Ben Grisafi Big Band: Talk of the Town / But Beautiful / Swing, Sweet & Sentimental

by Jack Bowers
October 1, 2001

In Juke Box Saturday Night, his book that embodies “memories of the Big Band Era and beyond,” author Richard Grudens includes chapters on bandleaders Artie Shaw, Les Brown, Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton, Red Norvo, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Harry James — and Ben Grisafi. Ben who? That’s Ben G–r–i–s–a–f–i, who, at an age when ...