Results for "Jack Bowers"

John Bailey: Can You Imagine?

by Jack Bowers
February 28, 2020

Letting his imagination roam free, trumpeter John Bailey envisions a world in which one of his musical touchstones, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, is president of the United States--one in which Gillespie's cabinet includes Duke Ellington (secretary of state), Louis Armstrong (secretary of agriculture) and Miles Davis (CIA director). The fact is, Gillespie did “run" for president in ...

The Stan Kenton Orchestra / Trinity College: Concert Impressions

by Jack Bowers
February 23, 2020

Here's another splendid two-disc anthology from Tantara Productions showcasing music from the capacious Stan Kenton library, performed on Disc 1 by the Kenton Orchestra circa 1972-76 and on Disc 2 by the Trinity College Big Band, Alumni Band and Symphony Orchestra in 2004 and 2007. Tantara has now released more than twenty albums, all devoted to ...

The DIVA Jazz Orchestra: DIVA + the Boys

by Jack Bowers
February 11, 2020

After more than twenty-five years as one of the world's most renowned big bands, drummer Sherrie Maricle's superlative all-female DIVA Jazz Orchestra invited a quartet of “the boys" onboard to help ensure the ensemble's twelfth album's success. Even though DIVA needs no consorts to affirm its unremitting mastery, it is nonetheless pleasurable to witness these talented ...

Stan Kenton and His Orchestra: A Kenton Trilogy, Part 1: Dance Time

by Jack Bowers
February 9, 2020

Better late than never. Having already appraised Part 2 of Sounds of Yesteryear's three-part salute to the Stan Kenton Orchestra, it seemed only proper that the same should be done (albeit out of order) for Part 1 (and Part 3 as well, whenever it is released). Unlike Part 2, which is devoted to the artistry of ...

Jack Bowers

University of Toronto Jazz Orchestra: Embargo

by Jack Bowers
February 5, 2020

Talk about setting the bar high: on an album designed to showcase the talents of students in Professor Terry Promane's classes on arranging, the University of Toronto Jazz Orchestra's music director, Gordon Foote, chose to open Embargo with Rob McConnell's classic arrangement of the Billy Strayhorn warhorse, “Take the 'A' Train," thus giving the undergrads a ...

Nick Fraser / Kris Davis / Tony Malaby: Zoning

by Jack Bowers
January 28, 2020

What can be said in a positive vein about Zoning, an essentially inward-leaning and dissonant exercise in avant-garde or “free" jazz by drummer Nick Fraser, pianist Kris Davis and saxophonist Tony Malaby (supported on three numbers by tenor Ingrid Laubrock and trumpeter Lina Allemano). Well, it is music, of a sort—and it is (largely) improvised, or ...

Ralph Peterson: Listen Up!

by Jack Bowers
January 19, 2020

As on its debut album, I Remember Bu, drummer / educator Ralph Peterson's Gen-Next Big Band, composed for the most part of students at Boston's Berklee College of Music, pays tribute on Listen Up! to one of Peterson's mentors, the late great Art Blakey, known far and wide as the longtime leader and sparkplug of the ...

Sam Newbould Quintet: Blencathra

by Jack Bowers
January 18, 2020

Blencathra, the debut album from British-born, Amsterdam-based saxophonist Sam Newbould's quintet, presents half a dozen of the leader's forward-leaning compositions and arrangements whose general point of view may be subdued, at times veering toward melancholy, but is never less than engaging. One of Newbould's strengths, even when the music is leisurely and pensive, lies in his ...

Stan Kenton: A Kenton Trilogy, Part 2 / The Sound of Jazz

by Jack Bowers
January 13, 2020

The Sound of Jazz by the legendary Stan Kenton Orchestra follows Part 1 of a Kenton Trilogy, Dance Time, and hopefully precedes a third component yet to be named. Although Kenton has been gone for more than forty years (he died in August 1979), he has hardly been forgotten, with reissues of concert and studio sessions ...