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University of Colorado Jazz Ensemble 1: CU Over the Rainbow
by Jack Bowers
Over the past five years the University of Colorado's Jazz Studies program has earned no less than 13 Student Music Awards from Down Beat magazine. I say earned because (a) the competition is gaining strength each year; and (b) this is one close-knit and hardworking group of undergrads, as one can readily verify on CU Over the Rainbow.
Of course, any disc that opens with Porter and closes with Gershwin merits extra credit from this impartial observer, especially when played ...
read moreThe University of Colorado Jazz Ensemble 1: CU 'Round Midnight
by Jack Bowers
For its second album, and first under new director John Davis, the University of Colorado Jazz Ensemble 1 has chosen to focus on the music of pianist/composer Jim McNeely... no easy task, my friend. Four of the nine selections were written by McNeely, who is music director of the cutting-edge Vanguard and Stockholm Jazz Orchestras. To make navigating their treacherous shoals even more perilous, the ensemble performs three of them in concert, but if Davis’s students are working up a ...
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