Customer Reviews

The Sound of New York Jazz Underground

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With a title like New York Jazz Underground, I was expecting shrieking saxes over explosions of rhythm. Instead, this is a finely crafted, melodic, swinging, very pleasant big band album. Each selection makes for pleasant and satisfying listening. One of the best jazz albums I have heard in quite a while!

This album has a lot of good music with a lot of good players. Jeff Ballard, Jorge Rossi, Mark Ferber on drums just to name a few of the great drummers on the album. The album was put together to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the Fresh Sound New Talent Orchestra. Basically each composer submitted an original tune and then arranged one as well.

The arrangements are beautiful and the recording quality is great. It's too bad that they don't put one these out every year. Andrew Rathbun's arrangement of Wayne Shorter's "Witch Hunt" is a funky 7/4 groove. Jason Lindner's "Meditations on two chords" has some beautiful vocals and wonderful playing. The Aphex Twin arrangement of "Nannou" is great, but I think The Bad Plus pulled of a better performance of "Flim" on These are the Vistas. Just seemed to work better with the smaller group.

Good discs. Good music. Great musicians. You can find it on the Fresh Sound website if no one is selling it on Amazon.