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Tom Luer
Tom recently performed on the NBC broadcast of “Sports Illustrated 50 Years of Beautiful” and on the “X-Factor” on Fox. Previous television appearances include the American Music Awards, the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and the Ellen Degeneres Show. Additional performance credits and tours include the Gordon Goodwin Big Phat Band, Poncho Sanchez, Queen Latifah, Patrizio Buanne, and Engelbert Humperdinck .
Tom has a Master’s Degree in Saxophone Performance from the University of Southern Mississippi, a Bachelor’s Degree in Performance from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and additional graduate studies in jazz at the University of North Texas. As a music educator, Tom is currently an adjunct faculty member at Cal Poly Pomona. Previous positions have included the University of North Texas, Texas Christian University, Bethel College, North Lake Community College and Butler County Community College.
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Dan West: Presenting the Dan West Big Band
by Jack Bowers
"If it walks like a big band and talks like a big band..." well, that does not always mean it actually is a big band. For example, Los Angeles-based composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Dan West 's able group is by and large an octet which, by means of modern electronics, has been transformed into a full-fledged big band, and a pretty good one at that. On its debut recording, Presenting the Dan West Big Band, the ensemble is strong and ...
Continue ReadingDave Slonaker Big Band: Shifty Paradigms
by Jack Bowers
While Los Angeles-based composer and arranger Dave Slonaker's paradigms may be shifty, his all-star big band is about as forthright as one could wish. On Shifty Paradigms, his third recording fronting the band, Slonaker guides his peerless eighteen-member ensemble through its paces on a dynamic and always-swinging program that encompasses seven of his stellar original compositions and the venerable standard, “Bye Bye Blues." Slonaker's game plan is simple: give the band superior themes and charts on which to ...
Continue ReadingMark Masters Ensemble: Sam Rivers 100
by Dan McClenaghan
The Mark Masters Ensemble released Porgy and Bess Redefined! (Capri Records) in 2005. The music was taken from the George Gershwin/DuBose Heyward English-language opera, which was first performed in 1935. Masters' take on the classic was brilliantly expressed by the ensemble, who dug into his adventurous charts with freedom mixed with respect for the familiar and often-covered (most notably by the Miles Davis/Gil Evans teaming) original. It was a breakout effort for Masters. Billy Harper was there on tenor sax, ...
Continue ReadingMark Masters: Sam Rivers 100
by Jack Bowers
Sam Rivers 100 is the first of two homages recorded in 2023-24 by arranger Mark Masters and his blue chip southern California-based ensemble. This one pays tribute to the music of the late saxophonist Sam Rivers on the hundredth anniversary of his birth; the second, Dance, Eternal Spirits, Dance! salutes the music of tenor saxophonist Billy Harper who is the ensemble's guest soloist on both albums. Rivers, who died in December 2011, was an early bebopper who ...
Continue ReadingDave Slonaker: Convergency
by Richard J Salvucci
In December 1910, Virginia Woolf once observed, human character changed and, along with it, so did everything else. Politics, society, religion, sex, all of it, she thought, would leave the ancien regime behind. And, to a point, she was correct. Within a few years, the old world was gone, swept away by war and revolution. It was not coming back. Ever. Somehow, listening to the marvelous musical products of modern big bands, Woolf seems oddly relevant. The level ...
Continue ReadingDave Slonaker Big Band: Convergency
by Jack Bowers
While big-band albums generally differ, sometimes widely, in tone and temperament, there are definitive criteria by which every one may be evaluated--arrangements, performers, sound quality, sequencing and, above all, the elusive but imperative swing quotient. Dave Slonaker checks all those boxes and more on Convergency, a superlative successor to his excellent Grammy-nominated debut album, Intrada, released in 2013. To begin with, Slonaker, best known as a film and television composer, is an excellent big-band writer and arranger, ...
Continue ReadingDave Slonaker Big Band: Convergency
by Troy Dostert
Composer/conductor Dave Slonaker probably won't qualify as “prolific," at least based on recorded output alone, as he spends a lot of his time behind the scenes in film and television work—but one must appreciate the level of craftsmanship that he brings to his big band projects. His debut release, Intrada (Origin Records, 2014), received a well-earned Grammy nomination, and his sophomore effort is no less accomplished, with the well-designed compositions and outstanding ensemble work that justify all the attention it ...
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Music
Shifty Paradigms
From: Shifty ParadigmsBy Tom Luer
Downstairs Blues Upstairs
From: Sam Rivers 100By Tom Luer
Convergency
From: ConvergencyBy Tom Luer
Your Heart Is As Black As Night
From: SignatureBy Tom Luer
Mind the Gap
From: Project PopularBy Tom Luer
Tom Luer
Location: Los Angeles
Instrument: Saxophone, tenor
