The Data Lords Are No Match For the Rest of Us in Maria Schneider’s Visionary...
Imagine what Hitler could have done if Facebook and Instagram had existed in 1938. There wouldn’t have been a single Jew or Romany person left alive in Europe. Or any musicians, artists, writers, or...
View ArticleA Long Overdue New Album From Tom Csatari’s Drifting, Haunting, Maddening,...
Back in 2016, this blog characterized guitarist Tom Csatari’s Uncivilized as a “tectonically shifting ten-piece ‘drone-jazz orchestra.’“ They earned a glowing New York Times review for a show at a...
View ArticleShapeshiftingly Electrifying Indian-Inspired Big Band Jazz by the Modern Art...
Irrepressible, paradigm-shifting Hungarian ensemble the Modern Art Orchestra‘s latest album is an electrifying blend of Indian music and big band jazz. Bandleader and trumpeter Kornél Fekete-Kovács’...
View ArticleTroubled, Intertwining Atmospherics in Trumpeter Nate Wooley’s Latest Seven...
Trumpeter Nate Wooley’s ongoing Seven Storey Mountain project has a new sixth edition available and streaming at Bandcamp. It’s nothing like anything else in the series: haunting, often chaotic and...
View ArticleA Historic, Hard-Hitting New Album From the Radam Schwartz Organ Big Band
The new album by the Radam Schwartz Organ Big Band, Message From Groove and GW – streaming at Spotify – is the first-ever big band jazz release where the organist plays all the basslines. Dr. Lonnie...
View ArticleThe Webber/Morris Big Band Deliver a Smartly Thematic, Unique, Entertaining...
The Webber/Morris Big Band‘s album Both Are True – which hasn’t hit the web yet – is a treat for anyone who likes meticulously crafted new big band jazz. It’s unusual in that most of it is remarkably...
View ArticleDynamic Big Band Music For Transcending Troubled Times
Big band composer Daniel Hersog took the title for his album Night Devoid of Stars – streaming at Bandcamp – from a Martin Luther King quote about how love is the only power strong enough to defeat...
View ArticleMuhal Richard Abrams Leaves Us With a Knowing Wink
Muhal Richard Abrams knew as much about writing for large improvising ensembles as anyone who ever lived. So it’s no surprise that one of his late largescale works, Soundpath, would be as erudite as it...
View ArticleBig Band Jazz Has Never Been So Much Fun As It Is on Satoko Fujii’s...
Satoko Fujii did a second album with her Orchestra Berlin because, she says, “These guys are total goofballs. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much ridiculous fun in the studio as I had with these...
View ArticleThe South Florida Jazz Orchestra Smolder and Blaze Through Latin-Tinged Rick...
Several years back, bassist Chuck Bergeron and his South Florida Jazz Orchestra put out an absolutely incendiary album featuring a six-trumpet frontline. Their latest release, Cheap Thrills – streaming...
View ArticleBroodingly Gorgeous, Tightly Orchestrated Sounds From Organist Bence Vas’ Big...
Large ensembles led by organists are about the rarest of any configuration of jazz musicians, yet they all seem to find this page. The 8 Cylinder Big Band, Radam Schwartz Organ Big Band, and now the...
View ArticleRomance Conquers Everything in Brian Landrus’ Lush, Quietly Thrilling Album
If there’s one thing the lockdowners fear even more than massive crowds of us assembling against them, it’s romance. Millions of people out in the streets can get pretty fired up, but love conquers...
View ArticleRevisiting One of the Funnest Albums Released by a Big Band in Recent Years
One of the funniest, most individualistically lavish albums ever to be featured on this page is Josh Green & the Cyborg Orchestra’s Telepathy & Bop, streaming at Spotify. The album cover image...
View ArticleAn Eclectically Catchy Big Band Album by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Players
Does listening to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Players transform them from a seventeen-piece big band into a trio? One of the premises of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is that some particles are...
View ArticleOne Mighty Showstopper After Another on the JCA Orchestra’s Latest Live Album
The JCA Orchestra are the Boston counterpart to Miho Hazama’s rotating cast of big band jazz talent, whose home until the lockdown was the Jazz Gallery. But the JCA Orchestra have been championing the...
View ArticleRevisiting a Lavish, Exquisitely Textured, Symphonic Big Band Album by Brian...
Listening to one Brian Landrus album makes you want to hear more. It’s impossible to think of another baritone saxophonist from this era , or for that matter any other, who’s a more colorful composer....
View ArticleA Vibrant, Evocative, Summery Album From the Dennis Kwok Jazz Orchestra
The Dennis Kwok Jazz Orchestra’s album Windward Bound – streaming at Bandcamp – opens with a mist of wave splashes and sounds of shorebirds. But those aren’t samples. That’s the band conjuring up...
View ArticleA Wild, Gorgeously Surreal Jazz Mass From the Czech Republic
You have never heard anything as surreal or triumphantly outside-the-box as the B-Side Band’s performance of Jaromír Hnilička’s Missa Jazz, which hasn’t hit the web yet. Structured in segments that...
View ArticleA Breathtaking, Epic Debut Album From the Fabia Mantwill Orchestra
There hasn’t been a debut big band jazz album on as ambitious a level as the Fabia Mantwill Orchestra’s initial release, Em.Perience (streaming at Spotify) in a long time. Maybe since Asuka Kakitani’s...
View ArticleAn Electrifying, Entertaining, Amusing Magnum Opus From Multi-Reedwoman Anna...
Damn, this is a funny record. Multi-reedwoman Anna Webber‘s mammoth new double album Idiom – streaming at Bandcamp – is her most ambitious yet. She’s no stranger to large-ensemble work, most memorably...
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