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Frantisek Uhlir: Story of my life
by Jack Bowers
Story of My Life is a seven-part suite (plus prologue) written by the outstanding and well-traveled Czech-born bassist Frantisek Uhlir to appraise his life as a musician and evoke in musical terms memories of his boyhood home, his love as a teenager of music and sports, his studies at the Brno Conservatory, his life as a ...
Jim Waller Big Band: Bucket List
by Jack Bowers
One glance at Jim Waller's silver mane is enough to make it clear he is no young lion. In fact, Waller, a veteran composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist who calls San Antonio, Texas, home, is nearing his eighth decade. Even though Waller's career has been long and successful, there was one item on his Bucket List that ...
Mike Melito/Dino Losito Quartet: You're It!
by Jack Bowers
The album cover says “Mike Melito / Dino Losito Quartet." What it does not say is that drummer Melito and pianist Losito have at their beck-and-call an awesome secret weapon, Philadelphia-based tenor saxophonist Larry McKenna, a phenom from the Lester Young school of elegant swinging whose voice on the horn is as debonair and persuasive as ...
Mike Barone Big Band: Brazil
by Jack Bowers
Brazil doesn't signify that the venerable California-based composer / arranger Mike Barone has gone Latin; it simply means that “Brazil" is the opening number and the name Barone chose for the latest in his long-running series of remarkable big-band albums. No matter, as a Barone recording by any other name would be every inch as inspired ...
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 ...
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 ...
