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Javier Nero
Javier Nero Jazz Orchestra, Hendrik Meurkens, Alexander Claffy, Noa Levy & Paul Edis and more
by Benjamin Boddie
Today's Music--Right Now! Fantastic music by Javier Nero Jazz Orchestra, Hendrik Meurkens, Alexander Claffy, Noa Levy & Paul Edis, The BLCK Madonna, Ulysses Owens Jr., Dominic Walker Trio, The Sistering, Pat Bianchi, James Fernando, Sam Robinson, Dave Wilson Quartet, Jazz Sabbath, Jack Wood, Baltimore Jazz Collective, Sam Yahel, Monika Herzig, Kurt Elling & WDR Big Band, Joel Ross, Corcoran Holt Dan West, Bob Reynolds, The Jones Factor, John Clay, Diane Marino, Darren Litzie, Ron Rieder, Betty Bryant, Julian Davis Reid, ...
Continue ReadingJavier Nero Jazz Orchestra: Alkebulan
by Jack Bowers
On Alkebulan, the second recording by his jny: 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 ...
Continue ReadingRemy Le Boeuf: Heartland Radio
by Angelo Leonardi
Nel 2022 Remy Le Boeuf s'è trasferito da New York a Denver per dirigere il dipartimento “Jazz and Commercial Studies" presso la Lamont School of Music della locale università. La colonna sonora di quel lungo viaggio in autostrada è stata la musica delle radio che alternavano pop, rock, rhythm & blues, country, dance ed altro. “Non c'è molto jazz in mezzo al Paese" ha ricordato l'orchestratore e sassofonista ma la musica di quest'album (che riflette le emozioni di quell'itinerario) ...
Continue ReadingRemy Le Boeuf’s Assembly of Shadows: Heartland Radio
by Dan Bilawsky
This ear-grabbing date from Remy Le Boeuf's Assembly of Shadows--the band's third release, following its eponymous debut (in 2019) and Architecture of Storms (SoundSpore Records, 2021)--is a sonic mirror, reflecting the multihyphenate leader's recent travels in both life and sound. Influenced by an odyssey across inland America, sights encountered along the way, and the adventitious, airwaves-dictated soundtrack to the journey, Heartland Radio offers up a striking portrait of a Promethean artist with an unfettered imagination. Opening on ...
Continue ReadingRuss Spiegel: Caribbean Blue
by Jack Bowers
Pleasant music with ample color and variety--that's an apt description of Caribbean Blue, the latest albulm from California-bred, Florida-based guitarist Russ Spiegel, who has surrounded himself with world-class musicians and given them rein to canvass ten of his generally engaging compositions and bring them admirably to life. While everything on offer is respectable, it is the album's midsection--tracks 3-8--that rise above the others and lend the session much of its vitality and charm. After harmonica virtuoso Hendrik ...
Continue ReadingRemy Le Boeuf: Architecture of Storms
by Jack Bowers
It's hard to become bored or complacent when listening to Architecture of Storms, alto saxophonist Remy Le Boeuf's second album as leader of the twenty-member Assembly of Shadows orchestra. Every song is quite different from the others, and every one has its moments of shapeliness and charm. Le Boeuf arranged every number and composed all but Justin Vernon's “Minnesota, WI" and the album's nameplate, which he co-wrote with poet Sara Pirkle, he asserts, “on a brooding stormy ...
Continue ReadingJavier Nero Jazz Orchestra: Kemet (The Black Land)
by Jack Bowers
On Kemet (The Black Land), trombonist/composer Javier Nero pays homage to a highly advanced African civilization that flourished before the Egyptian kingdom was established and thousands of years before the Greek and Roman empires that are hailed today as the pillars of modern/western culture. Even though Kemet is all but forgotten in 2023, Nero (whose name in Italian literally means “black") says that scholars from surrounding societies including the Greeks were once sent there to study the arts, sciences, literature, ...
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