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Pat LaBarbera Kirk MacDonald Quintet: Trane of Thought, Live at the Rex
by Jack Bowers
Sometimes the name of an album can be a dead giveaway. Clearly, tenors Pat La Barbera and Kirk MacDonald, the co-leaders of this admirable quintet from north of the border, are enthusiastic admirers and champions of the late great saxophonist John Coltrane. Disciples, yes, but leagues away from slavish imitators. LaBarbera and MacDonald have strong and ...
UNT One O'Clock Lab Band: Lab 2019
by Jack Bowers
UNT is the University of North Texas, home to the country's flagship Jazz Studies program since its inception in the mid-1940s, and home as well to no less than a dozen undergraduate big bands, each one named for its daily rehearsal time. Pride of place goes to the One O'Clock ensemble whose special artistry has been ...
Jennifer Leitham: Remnants of Humanity
by Jack Bowers
Jennifer Leitham, already known as one of the most accomplished bassists on the West Coast (as well as other precincts spanning the globe), spreads her wings, so to speak, on Remnants of Humanity, singing on seven numbers as well as playing her usual assertive upright bass most of the way. As a singer and musician, Leitham ...
Brian Lynch Big Band: The Omni-American Book Club / My Journey Through Literature in Music
by Jack Bowers
Aside from being a multi-award-winning trumpeter and composer, Brian Lynch appears to be an avid reader and social arbiter as well. His twenty-third album as leader, a two-CD set whose protracted and austere name, The Omni-American Book Club / My Journey Through Literature in Music, belies its bold and free-hearted nature, is dedicated to a number ...
Roberto Magris Sextet: Sun Stone
by Jack Bowers
Italian-born pianist Roberto Magris likes to change things up. He can be seen and heard leading groups from trio to octet and beyond, and meshing quite comfortably into groups of all shapes and sizes. On Sun Stone, his fifteenth recording for JMood Records, Magris fronts an admirable sextet whose front-line includes the venerable Ira Sullivan on ...
Joel Miller: Unstoppable
by Jack Bowers
Montreal-based saxophonist / composer Joel Miller brings an impressive resume to bear on Unstoppable, a large-ensemble recording aptly described in an accompanying press release as “a 21st-Century chamber symphony." In a career spanning more than two decades, Miller has earned a number of high honors including a Grand Prix Award at the Montreal Jazz Festival for ...
Ben Markley Quartet: Slow Play
by Jack Bowers
The jacket cover on this splendid new studio recording from OA2 Records reads “Ben Markley Quartet Featuring Joel Frahm," and for good reason: the New York City-based saxophonist lends considerable improvisational weight to Slow Play, which would be a far different animal without him. That's not to say that pianist Markley, bassist Marty Kenney and drummer ...
Big Beat: Sounds Good, Feels Good
by Jack Bowers
So what can be reported about Big Beat, an eighteen-piece ensemble from New Jersey whose debut album, Sounds Good, Feels Good, is more pop / rock than jazz, more “hip / contemporary" than straight-ahead / traditional? First, that the band certainly Sounds Good as a unit, skating easily through an assortment of backbeat-heavy themes that consist ...
P. J. Perry Featuring Bill Mays: This Quiet Room
by Jack Bowers
In jazz, as in almost any other pursuit, there really is no stand-in for experience. P. .J. Perry, now well into his seventh decade, has been a titan on Canada's saxophone scene for more than half a century, while California-born pianist Bill Mays, three years Perry's junior and his able collaborator on the duo album This ...
Ezra Weiss Big Band: We Limit Not The Truth of God
by Jack Bowers
Composer / arranger Ezra Weiss's debut big-band recording, We Limit Not the Truth of God, is actually a suite written for his two young children to help them understand and embrace the often confusing and chaotic world in which we live. It is thus entirely appropriate that the album was recorded (with an audience) in a ...
