Browse some recent Origin Reviews.
Ben Patterson Jazz Orchestra - Mad Scientist Music
by George W Harris, Jazz Weekly
Composer and trombonist Ben Patterson puts together a modern sounding big band through some swinging originals. The charts give a hint of Count Basie, as the sections jab from the side like a middleweight boxer on the Rat Packish "The Mixup" featuring the tenor saxes of Tedd Baker and Xavier Perez". Likewise, the reeds are velvety and brass polished as they warmly frame Patterson's trombone on "Anne Marie" and they create bold declarations... read more
Andrew Rathbun Large Ensemble - The Atwood Suites
by Paul Rauch, All About Jazz
4-STARS The mingling of jazz music and poetry is not a new concept. It has always been an amiable, yet at times, uncomfortable fit. From a verse standpoint, it is in many ways liberating. While most vocalized lyrics and spoken word forms rely on rhyme to speak to cadence and rhythm, free verse poetry liberates the narrative from the confinements of structure, and much like an improvising instrumentalist, takes spoken language into a... read more
Triocity - I Believe In You
by Chris Spector, Midwest Record
When do chestnuts not sound like chestnuts? When this trio of educators gets their hands on them and twists and turns them into sounds like you never heard before. Long time faculty members of Eastman School of Music, this doesn't sound like anything you ever heard on a Chuck Mangione record, even when he was leaning left in his Mercury days. This is a through left leaning set that'll have you wondering where the classics went and continually... read more
Mike Pope - The Parts You Keep
by Chris Jisi, Bass Magazine
Mike Pope was a flurry of activity at the Anthony Jackson tribute concert at Matt Garrison's Shapeshifter Lab in Brooklyn this past February. From rehearsing "Race With the Devil on Spanish Highway" with Al Di Meola on his signature Fodera 6-string, to discussing a new upright he bought with Stanley Clarke, to jumping in last-minute to take a straight-ahead piano solo on "Nica's Dream," to giving a heartfelt speech to Jackson about the profound... read more
Dudley Owens | Aaron Immanuel Wright - People Calling
by C. Michael Bailey, All About Jazz
Saxophonist Dudley Owens and bassist Aaron Wright bring together (in classic quintet format) a band intent on expanding the language of Miles Davis's second great quintet from within. On People Calling the band does exactly this: they create a late '60s sonic image stamped in 21st Century digital. The writing is firmly post bop, with Atlantic period Ornette Coleman fighting its way out. These influences are governed by a firm compositional... read more
Tom Rizzo - Imaginary Numbers
by George Fendel, Jazz Society of Oregon
Sometimes we simply tilt our head and mutter, "where has this guy been hiding??" Rizzo is veteran of the Los Angeles jazz crowd, so why haven't we heard about him ... ever ... in any context. Well, go figure. You can catch him right here, and in the top rung company of LA greats including Bob Shepard, Bob Summers, Joe LaBarbera, Rich Eares and Tom Warrington. With arrangements by the trombonist on the date, Nick Lane, and the addition of a tuba... read more
Last Word Quintet - Falling to Earth
by Ferdinand Dupuis-Panther, Jazz'halo (Belgium)
We can read the following about the quintet and its creation on the Origin Records label website: "Born from a chance musical encounter at Chicago's Uptown Poetry Slam in 2017, The Last Word Quintet is a collaboration between four of Chicago's more active musicians and songwriters, with Marc Kelly Smith, a performance poet and a leader of the worldwide poetry slam movement. In an intense and amazingly short period of time they seamlessly wove... read more
Dave Slonaker Big Band - Convergency
by Jonathan Widran, JW Vibe
It's been almost ten years since the Dave Slonaker Big Band earned a Best Large Jazz Ensemble Grammy for their critically acclaimed debut album Intrada - but the extreme amount of time between that classic and the group's latest Convergency is understandable.
When he's not writing, arranging and conducting his tuneful, vibrant and swinging compositions for the Big Band, he's busy as one of the top arrangers and... read more
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