Aaron Eckert

Javier Nero Jazz Orchestra: Alkebulan

by Jack Bowers
March 11, 2026

On Alkebulan, the second recording by his Washington, DC-area Jazz Orchestra, composer, arranger and trombonist Javier Nero pays loving tribute to his African heritage, as he did on the orchestra's earlier album for Outside In Music, emet (The Black Land). As before, Nero uses his considerable skills as a writer and orchestrator to share and amplify his vision of a once-thriving civilization whose framework and particulars have been swept away in the historical narrative but whose impact on the human ...