Browse some recent Origin Reviews.
Gregg Keplinger / Reuben Radding / Daniel Carter - Language
by Aaron Steinberg, JazzTimes, May 2003
With time enough for a second West Coast recording, Radding and Carter invited Seattle mainstay drummer Gregg Keplinger into their orbit on Language (Origin). The recording opens with the raging "Speak Glow," a tune temperaamentally distant from the quiet meditations of Luminescence and an early warning that Carter and company are about to claim a much wider emotional and amplitudinal range. Carter lets more anguish into his... read more
Chris Walden Big Band - No Bounds
by Tony Augarde, MusicWeb International
Too many big band recordings sound the same, using hackneyed techniques and voicings. But this album sounds different right from the very start -- an imaginative arrangement of David Foster's Winter Games. The ensemble sound is a knockout, possibly because Chris Walden uses six trumpets and five trombones, creating a rich and rare depth to the music.
The solos in between the ensembles are more conventional but all skillfully played,... read more
Anthony Branker and Word Play - Uppity
by Robert Ratajczak, LongPlay | RadioJAZZ.FM 35, Poland
Composer, conductor and director of the University Jazz [Program] in Princeton, Anthony Branker has created an excellent musical project by engaging with the leaders of American jazz; musicians: saxophonist Ralph Bowen, trombonist Andy Hunter, Eli Asher trumpeter, pianist Jim Ridl and drummer Donald Edwards.
The album opens with the funky rhythm maintained in ?Let's Conversate!? in which the saxophone and trombone lead the title conversation... read more
Joachim Mencel - Brooklyn Eye
by Dionizy Piątkowski, Era Jazzu (Poland)
Joachim Mencel is an experienced pianist and composer, a respected arranger and producer of vocal music. But he is also the author of many interesting music projects, the most important of which is certainly the jazz cantata "Love explained everything to me" (for jazz combo, string orchestra, boys' choir and soloists), cooperation with the English violinist Nigel Kennedy, concerts with the American clarinetist Brad Terry. The original projects... read more
Anthony Branker and Word Play - Uppity
by Ken Franckling, Ken Franckling's Jazz Notes
A medical condition that led to a seizure and two brain aneurysms in 1999 forced jazzman Anthony Branker to give up the trumpet, but not his talents as a conceptualist and composer. (He is also an educator ? the founder and director of the jazz studies program at Princeton.) His newest release, featuring his all-star sextet Word Play, is both beautiful and provocative. Favorites: ?Three Gifts (from a Nigerian Mother to God)? and the title track... read more
Anthony Branker & Imagine - Songs My Mom Liked
by Thierry De Clemensat, Paris Move
Time passes, and an impressive number of connections are made year after year with people we admire. This is the case with composer Anthony Branker, one of the most remarkable American composers, with whom I will share an interview soon. In Anthony Branker's work, humanity is as significant as his music. We remember his impressive album released in 2023, "What Place Can Be For Us?", which defended civil rights. It is no surprise, then, to see... read more
Bobby Broom - Upper West Side Story
by Mr. Blue Boogie, Billybop.be (Belgium)
**** (4-Stars)
Bobby Broom is one of today?s Top guitarists in the world of Jazz music and with his Upper West Side Story; he comes as trio with 9
terrific tracks. All of them are original, but none of them will become a Jazz Standard. However that really doesn?t change a lot to
the fact that the songs are great and full of energy. "D?s Blues" is a typical Hard Bop track. Title track "Upper West Side Story? comes
with some... read more
Laurie Antonioli - The Constant Passage of time
by C. Michael Bailey, All About Jazz
West coast vocalist and teacher Laurie Antonioli has had a storied jazz career (which she has mentioned committing to the page one day). Presently, she is enjoying a calm period of determined evolution and realization that has resulted in her most recent recordings: American Dreams (Intrinsic Music, 2010), Songs Of Shadow, Songs Of Light: The Music Of Joni Mitchell (Origin Records, 2014) and Varuna (Origin Records, 2015). Antonioli extends her... read more
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