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Justin Morell: Concerto for Guitar and Jazz Orchestra
by Jack Bowers
Justin Morell, himself a world-class guitarist, does not play guitar (or anything else) on this splendid new album, which, even so, could not have taken flight without him. Morell, an assistant professor of music at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania, composed and arranged the inclusive three-movement Concerto for Guitar and Jazz Orchestra, performed in his stead ...
Larry Dickson Jazz Quartet: Winter Horizons
by Jack Bowers
Winter Horizons is the last of Cincinnati-based baritone saxophonist Larry Dickson's four-part salute to the seasons which began in 2015 with Second Springtime and includes Summergold Promises and Donora Autumn. As before, Dickson leads a quartet whose charter members are bassist Michael Sharfe and drummer Jim Leslie. Alto saxophonist Rick Van Matre, Dickson's band mate in ...
Matt Savage Groove Experiment: Splash Variations
by Jack Bowers
Matt Savage, a young man who knows his way around a keyboard (a child prodigy, he recorded his first album, Live at the Olde Mill, when he was barely nine years old), has added a new twist, namely soul / funk, to Splash Variations, the thirteenth recording under his name and first as leader of the ...
Jim Brenan 11: 50 / 50
by Jack Bowers
A popular jazz magazine once had (and perhaps still has) a list of CDs in most issues labeled “beyond category." 50 / 50, the debut (?) recording by Canadian saxophonist / composer Jim Brenan's eleven-piece ensemble, would fit quite comfortably therein. It is as hard to ascertain Brenan's frames of reference as it is to unravel ...
Michael Kocour: East Of The Sun
by Jack Bowers
Here's another well-planned and immaculately recorded solo album by pianist Michael Kocour, his second such enterprise for OA2 Records (the first, Wherever You Go, There You Are, was released in 2015). As its title suggests, East of the Sun consists almost entirely of gems from the Great American Songbook with one zircon (guitarist Don Gibson's “I ...
Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw: Crossroads
by Jack Bowers
The Netherlands's Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw, which started life in 1996 as the New Concert Big Band, a successor to such leading lights as Count Basie and Woody Herman, has evolved since then into an up-to-date ensemble that more closely resembles New York's Vanguard Jazz Orchestra or composer Bill Holman's legendary West Coast rehearsal band. ...
Jay Thomas with the Oliver Groenewald NewNet: I Always Knew
by Jack Bowers
There aren't many jazz musicians who play both brass and woodwinds, fewer still who play them as well as the veteran Seattle-based virtuoso Jay Thomas (the word “virtuoso" is used with due care). On I Always Knew, recorded in January 2018 with German-born trumpeter / arranger Oliver Groenewald's NewNet, Thomas traverses the ballad form on a ...
Ekdahl / Bagge Big Band: New Thing
by Jack Bowers
It's always exciting and pleasurable to welcome a new member into the jazz world's ever-shrinking big-band fraternity--especially one as sharp and energetic as this. The tasteful and impressive Ekdahl / Bagge Big Band--from Stockholm, Sweden, no less--takes its name from those of its co-leaders, drummer Per Ekdahl and pianist Carl Bagge who composed and / or ...
John Fedchock Quartet: Reminiscence
by Jack Bowers
After recording his quartet's splendid album Fluidity (Summit Records 2015), trombonist John Fedchock realized he had enough unused material in hand from that delightful concert date to consider releasing a second album. The more he listened to the music that hadn't made the cut on Fluidity, the more Fedchock was convinced that a second album not ...
Chris Jentsch Group No Net: Topics in American History
by Jack Bowers
Brooklyn-based guitarist / composer Chris Jentsch writes with clear images in mind and invites the listener to see and hear them as he does. On his sixth and latest CD, Jentsch draws on a longstanding interest in historical events and trends to describe in musical terms Topics in American History ranging from 1491 (the year before ...
