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I went to see the Realistic Orchestra on a lark, really. They were playing at Yerba Buena Gardens for free on a Saturday, and I happened to be in the area with my wife, shopping. I wasn’t even really planning to write a review, but I was fairly impressed.
The first thing that struck me […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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Jim McNeely makes most jazz arrangers seem like complete fuddy duddies. He routinely takes other people’s compositions and turns them inside out, invariably finding new things to say. His own compositions are unique. McNeely sounds like no one else.
Take The Fruit, a composition by Bud Powell. McNeely starts off with a […]

JAZZBO NOTES RECOMMENDED RECORDING
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Stefon Harris really set himself up as a target calling this release The Grand Unification Theory. The title implies that Harris’ ambition was to bring all of the strands of jazz together under one roof and tie them together so we can see the connections, much the way that Mingus used […]

JAZZBO NOTES RECOMMENDED RECORDING
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The original Head On recording was one of those third-stream efforts that were intermittently attempted throughout the sixties and early seventies by the likes of Joe Zawinul and Miles Davis. The composer Bobby Hutcherson is working with here is the classically trained pianist Todd Cochran, who joins vibist Hutcherson, along with […]

JAZZBO NOTES HIGHLY RECOMMENDED RECORDING
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It might be hard to fathom, given vibraphonist Gary Burton’s current status as a conservative, mainstream jazz musician, but when he started his career as a leader, Burton was an iconoclast, and one of the greatest innovators of the 60s. It was Burton that made the first steps towards fusion, […]

JAZZBO NOTES RECOMMENDED RECORDING
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If there was ever an appropriate title for a CD, it’s Bob Moses’ When Elephants Dream Of Music. The music is often spacey, and yet it has a solid bottom end and an abundance of horns, all which serves to remind us of our ponderous friends in the animal kingdom. Composer/arranger […]

JAZZBO NOTES RECOMMENDED RECORDING
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There’s something perversely entertaining about listening to guitarist Larry Coryell wank away at rock and roll cliches on top of Better Git Hit In Your Soul, Mingus’ umpteenth remake of his big hit, Better Get It In Your Soul.
Three Or Four Shades Of Blues is late Mingus, and admittedly not […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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I’m going to make a sweeping generalization. Jim McNeely is the best big band composer and orchestra working today. I first became aware of Jim McNeely’s big band writing on the phenomenal East Coast Blow Out, which featured the WDR big band, with John Scofield as the principal soloist. On that […]

WORTH A LISTEN
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Randy Weston has said that arranger Melba Liston is his musical soul mate, and he has a point. Her bottom-heavy arrangements lumber along like an inebriated bear, which fits with Randy Weston’s Monk in Africa style. The only problem for me is that Randy Weston, if he is playing with a small […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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After Jaco’s tragic death, the market was flooded with posthumous releases. Most of them were pretty terrible. The Birthday Concert (issued on the Warner Brothers label) is a notable exception.
To a large degree, The Birthday Concert duplicates the set list of Invitation, the official live set that was put out while Jaco […]