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Jazz Musician of the Day: Rob McConnell
All About Jazz is celebrating Rob McConnell's birthday today! Robert Murray Gordon (Rob) McConnell is a Canadian jazz valve trombonist, composer, arranger, music educator and recording artist. Rob McConnell took up the valve trombone in high school, and began his performing career in the early 1950s, performing and studying with Don Thompson, Bobby Gimby, and later, ...
Jazz Musician of the Day: Rob McConnell
All About Jazz is celebrating Rob McConnell's birthday today! Robert Murray Gordon (Rob) McConnell is a Canadian jazz valve trombonist, composer, arranger, music educator and recording artist. Rob McConnell took up the valve trombone in high school, and began his performing career in the early 1950s, performing and studying with Don Thompson, Bobby Gimby, and later, ...
University of Toronto 12TET: Rebirth
by Jack Bowers
You'd be hard-pressed to find a more congenial curtain-raiser than Jason Stillman's animated, inflexibly swinging “Contemporary Insanity," which opens Rebirth, the debut album by the University of Toronto's snug and well-upholstered 12TET. That's admittedly a tough act to follow, and while the ensemble gives it the old college try it doesn't always live up to the ...
Maria Baptist: Music for Jazz Orchestra
by Jack Bowers
Like it or not, a new wave of young composer / arrangers has surfaced, scrupulously guiding big bands into heretofore uncharted waters, now and then smooth, at other times choppy, but always intriguing and inspired. Maria Schneider, George Gruntz, Jim McNeely and Carla Bley were among the pacesetters, followed in short order by such (relative) newcomers ...
The Rob Parton Big Band: Christmas Time Is Here
by Jack Bowers
The only plausible impetus for releasing an album of Christmas themes so close to the holiday itself is the inclusion of music that transcends the season and may be auditioned and appreciated throughout the year. Trombonist Chris McDonald accomplished that with his splendid album In the Mood for Christmas, and trumpeter Rob Parton has mirrored that ...
University of Toronto Jazz Ensemble: Reflections
by Jack Bowers
Wherever Gordon Foote goes, you may rest assured that pleasurable music is sure to follow. After twenty-six years at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he led the school's superlative Jazz Ensemble, Foote moved eastward to Toronto a year or so ago to oversee the splendid University of Toronto Jazz Orchestra, which recorded its most recent ...
The Jazz Professors: Live from the UCF-Orlando Jazz Festival / Do That Again
by Jack Bowers
The Jazz Professors aren't wearing any hats they don't own; the fact is, they really are Professors in the Jazz Studies program at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. Instead of letting the students have all the fun, however, the Professors have recorded three albums of their own, the second Live from UCF-Orlando Jazz Festival, ...
Sandviken Big Band: In the Name of Freedom
by Jack Bowers
This admirably performed two-CD set by Sweden's celebrated Sandviken Big Band, recorded live in 2009 and comprised for the most part of music composed by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, isn't without its ambiguous aspects. First, there's the title: while anyone who produces an album is free to assign any name that seems appropriate, In the ...
Swingin' on a Riff . . . Hangin' by a Thread?
by Jack Bowers
Betty and I returned to Albuquerque on Memorial Day after attending Swingin' on a Riff, the latest in a series of marvelous semi-annual events presented by Ken Poston and the Los Angeles Jazz Institute for more than twenty years at venues in and around L.A. This one was held May 23-26 at the Los Angeles Marriott ...
Pointing Fingers... And Naming Names
by Jack Bowers
As the countdown continues toward the last Big Band Report in June, the time has come to point fingers and name names--in other words, to compile a short list of contemporary jazz musicians who have risen above the norm to help make life more pleasurable for one devoted listener. These are, mind you, personal choices, and ...
