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Article: Live Review

Birth of the Cool at 75: A Philadelphia Premiere at the Clef Club

by Victor L. Schermer
April 7, 2023

Orchestra 2001 Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz and Performing Arts Birth of the Cool: A Philly Premiere, 75 Years Later Philadelphia, PA March 29, 2023 The advanced publicity for this exciting historically-based concert must have hit the pleasure centers of many fans, as it sold out on the second ...

Album

The Big Band Project

By Jim Levendis

Label: Self Produced
Released: 2022
Track listing: This Could Be the Start of Something Big; Taking a Chance on Love; The Nearness of You; Jeepers Creepers; Stardust; Easy to Love; One Morning in May; Everything I Love; Latin Medley (O Morro Nao Tern Vez/Midnight Sun/Corcovado); Just in Time; Silent Night.

Article: Live Review

Mary Ellen Desmond: Comfort and Joy 2022 at the Church of St. Luke and the Epiphany

by Victor L. Schermer
December 21, 2022

Mary Ellen Desmond Comfort and Joy Church of St. Luke and the Epiphany Philadelphia, PA December 12, 2022 In the course of the years, it has always been a pleasure to hear Mary Ellen Desmond sing, and for the past seventeen of those years, her special ...

Article: Album Review

Jim Levendis: The Big Band Project

Read "The Big Band Project" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
August 28, 2022

Jim Levendis knew that time was running out. In his mid-seventies, the veteran Philadelphia-area trumpeter and educator had contracted ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), the effects of which were rapidly sapping his energy and ability to function. As the disease progressed, Levendis confided in Len Pierro, a band mate in the Ward Marston band, that there was ...

Article: Interview

Pianist Joe Block: At the Start of His Big Bang

by Victor L. Schermer
June 9, 2022

According to cosmologists, our universe started as a tiny speck and within a fraction of a second exploded into a huge ever-expanding space with all the galaxies, stars, and planets condensing out of the dispersed matter within it. This picture of the origins of the cosmos provides an apt metaphor for the way in which some ...

Article: Profile

Hasaan Ibn Ali: Requiem (And Praise) For A Heavyweight Pianist

by Victor L. Schermer
March 29, 2022

"The new release of Hasaan's Retrospect In Retirement Of Delay: The Solo Recordings (Omnivore Recordings, 2021), which features him in privately recorded performances from 1962 to 1965, reveals his profundity, his overwhelming power, his mighty virtuosity. It does more than put him on the map of jazz history—it expands the map to include the vast expanse ...

Article: Live Review

Mary Ellen Desmond: Comfort and Joy 2021

by Victor L. Schermer
December 18, 2021

Mary Ellen Desmond Comfort and Joy Church of St. Luke and the Epiphany Philadelphia, PA December 12, 2021 Mary Ellen Desmond is one of the most treasured Philadelphia-based vocalists, and for more than a decade she has provided the inspiration for and fronted the same top ...

Article: Interview

Norman David: Forty-Year Wizard of The Eleventet

by Victor L. Schermer
August 4, 2021

A few years ago, a musician friend suggested I go hear a band that was playing at a place in Bella Vista, Philadelphia, a neighborhood with a significant jazz history (violinist Joe Venuti and guitarist Eddie Lang lived there and are honored with several plaques and a mural) -but not much current music to speak of. ...

Article: Album Review

The Len Pierro Jazz Orchestra: The Third Quarter

Read "The Third Quarter" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
February 7, 2021

Flourtown, PA native Len Pierro unveils one monster big band album that will be reverberating well beyond the boundaries of Pennsylvania and from radio studios throughout the jazz landscape for quite a long time. The Third Quarter is The Len Pierro Jazz Orchestra's recent offering and what an offering of fresh original compositions and re-imagined jazz ...

Article: Album Review

The Len Pierro Jazz Orchestra: The Third Quarter

Read "The Third Quarter" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
January 9, 2021

Any big-band album that opens with a rollicking Four Brothers-style saxophone soli is all but guaranteed to capture one's ear and interest. As it turns out, the buoyant “Fill in the Gap," on which the sax section sparkles, is but the first of many sonic delights on The Third Quarter, a marvelous new CD by Philadelphia-based ...