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Idit Shner: Live at the Jazz Station
by Jack Bowers
Alto saxophonist Idit Shner is a professor of saxophone and jazz studies at the University of Oregon. On Live at the Jazz Station, she offers her students (and others) a master class in how to translate academic theory into performance art—and she does it live, without a net, at Portland's Jazz Station. The ...
Ian Charleton Big Band: A Fresh Perspective
by Jack Bowers
After earning a master's degree in Jazz Studies from the University of North Texas, saxophonist Ian Charleton thought it might be a good idea to join a service band for a short time. He wound up in the Navy and, as of 2020, had spent two decades leading, playing in, touring the world and writing for ...
Schapiro 17: Human Qualities
by Jack Bowers
Following its splendid premiere recording, an exploration of Miles Davis' unrivaled album Kind Of Blue (Capitol Records, 1959), composer/arranger Jon Schapiro's 17-member ensemble broadens its horizons on Human Qualities, pairing seven of the maestro's astute and adventurous charts with the Roberta Flack best-seller, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." This time around, Schapiro proves ...
Miles Donahue: Just Passing Thru
by Jack Bowers
Miles Donahue is a versatile musician, a talent that serves him well on Just Passing Thru, an album wherein he not only plays soprano, alto and tenor saxophones, trumpet and keyboards but also wrote all but one of the session's nine selections. This is basically a quintet with guitarist Mike Stern added on the last three ...
Jazz WORMS: Squirmin'
by Jack Bowers
The Denver-based quintet Jazz WORMS recorded its first album, Crawling Out, in 1987. Based on the time it took to record a second, Squirmin', they may as well be called the Jazz SNAILS. To be fair, there are reasons why the next go-round took so long to materialize, the most conspicuous being success. In '87 the ...
Christopher Merz's Very Happy Band: While We Wait
by Jack Bowers
Saxophonist Christopher Merz's Very Happy Band is essentially a foursome of like-minded fun-lovers with trombonist Anthony Williams added on two numbers and trumpeter Dave Rezek on one. For the most part, this is happy jazz, eleven original compositions by Merz that underscore the music's sunnier side without sacrificing proficiency or substance. To escape ...
Ira B. Liss Big Band Jazz Machine: Mazel Tov Kocktail!
by Jack Bowers
Any big band that has been alive and kicking for forty-two years surely deserves a Mazel Tov or two. Ira B. Liss formed his San Diego-based Big Band Jazz Machine in 1979, and it has been standing tall on the local scene ever since. Although the band puts its best foot forward at the outset on ...
Professor Cunningham and His Old School: The Lockdown Blues
by Jack Bowers
Given the uncommon position in which the world found itself owing to the global coronavirus pandemic, it was only a matter of time before “socially distanced" albums such as this one, recorded by Australian-born “Professor" Adrian Cunningham's septet “in bedrooms around the world," in April 2020, were bound to emerge. More specifically, in bedrooms in NY ...
The 8-Bit Big Band: Backwards Compatible
by Jack Bowers
It's about time a big band turned its gaze to and focused its attention on the many memorable songs and melodies spawned by—video games? While it's true these make-believe themes may brook no comparison to Rodgers and Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, the Gershwin brothers, Cole Porter or even Neil Diamond, they are at least Backwards Compatible. And ...
Professor Aucoin & the Jazz Scientists: Mystified
by Jack Bowers
There is a heap of soul, blues, rock, funk and heart on Professor Tim Aucoin's album, Mystified. On the other hand, the jazz content is in rather short supply. The Jazz Scientists are good at what they do, but what they do is more akin to a nightclub act than a jazz performance, at times reminiscent ...
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