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Darrell Katz

Director of the Jazz Composers Alliance, helped to found the organization after being impressed by the success of other composers collective groups. Originally from Topeka, Kansas, Katz has lived in the Boston area since 1975.

Katz has synthesized a wide range of influences including modern classical, folk/blues traditions, and the entire jazz legacy into a mature and personal compositional style which has marked him as "one of Boston's most ambitious and provocative jazz composers" (the Boston Phoenix). This is exemplified, for instance, in his "Variations On A Theme By Jimi Hendrix, combined with his arrangement of "Manic Depression," which been described as "celebrating the night that Jimi Hendrix and Igor Stravinsky got into a fight while having dinner at Duke Ellington's house." More recently he has been exploring the relationship of text and music, in a series of collaborations with poet Paula Tatarunis, culminating in the release his improvisational cantata, The Death Of Simone Weil, which features vocalist Rebecca Shrimpton.

"There's an impressive variety of textures, colors, and rhythm in all of the JCA's collaborations, but it's never attempted anything like Katz's Simone Weil," writes the Boston Phoenix's Jon Garelick, who picked the album as one of the top 10 releases of 2003, "This work is eerie and moving, and even swinging." He appears regularly with the JCA Orchestra, the JCA Sax Quartet, and sometimes with his own group, The Darrell Katz Dreamland Orchestra.

The JCA, formed in 1985, has presented such major Jazz Composer/Performers as Julius Hemphill, Fred Ho, Dave Holland, Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Davis, Henry Threadgill, Maria Schneider, Tim Berne, and Sam Rivers.

Katz's music can be heard on the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra CD's, FLUX, which also feature Julius Hemphill and Sam Rivers, Dreamland, The Death Of Simone Weil, In Thru & Out and Celebration Of The Spirit. I 'm Me And You're Not, performed by The JCA Sax Quartet, vocalist Angel Gittens and poet Paula Tatarunis was released in 1999. His music can also be heard on Urban Objects by Kayle Brecher (Penchant Four Records) and Passion from The Wreckage, by Janet Planet (Stellar).

Darrell has received, The Massachusetts Artist Fellowship in composition, three Massachusetts Artist Fellowship finalist awards, a Jazz Fellowship Grant from the NEA, and grants from Meet The Composer, The Aaron Copland Fund, The New England Foundation For The Arts, the Artists Foundation, the National Association of Jazz Educators and 2 Readers Digest/ Margaret Jory copying grants. He's written over 50 pieces for jazz orchestra. Jazz performances have been by ensembles including the JCA Orchestra, The Darrell Katz Dreamland Orchestra, The Henry Threadgill Windstring Ensemble, The BMI Jazz Composers Workshop Orchestra, Orange Then Blue, Marimolin, Either Orchestra and True Colors. He's had chamber music performed by Marimolin, Ancora, and by the Studio for Electronic Music. College big bands at MIT, BU, Harvard, NEC, Berklee, Lawrence University, Eastman, McGill University, and others have his music in their books.

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Album Review

Darrell Katz & OddSong: Galeanthropolgy

Read "Galeanthropolgy" reviewed by Jerome Wilson


OddSong is a chamber ensemble led by composer Darrell Katz, and distilled from the membership of the larger JCA Orchestra. It features vibraphone, violin, saxophones and voice, on music which veers between art songs and bluesy sax-led jazz tunes. Most of Katz's original compositions on this album feature poems by his late wife, poet Paula Tatarunis, but the tracks also stretch out to include songs by Jimi Hendrix, James Taylor, Charles Mingus and Duke Ellington. Katz's original writing, ...

Album Review

Darrell Katz: Rats Live on No Evil Star

Read "Rats Live on No Evil Star" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi


La bostoniana Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra è un ampio organico diretto da Darrell Katz e composto da musicisti legati a vario titolo con il New England Conservatory e il Berklee College of Music. Nei suoi trent'anni di attività ha pubblicato una decina di album caratterizzati dal coniugare entro forme compositive complesse e rigorose (con molti riferimenti classici) differenti umori jazzistici. Il fulcro di ogni suo lavoro è presentare una o più opere estese, spesso delle suite, in una logica ...

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Album Review

Darrell Katz and the JCA Orchestra: Rats Live on No Evil Star

Read "Rats Live on No Evil Star" reviewed by Jack Bowers


It's a pretty sure bet that appraising any album whose title is also a palindrome isn't going to be a stroll in the park, even more so when the orchestra in question is the Jazz Composers Alliance (rule of thumb: the longer the name, the more abstruse the music) and the instrumentation includes voice, marimba, EWI, sopranino sax and five-string violin. Such is the nature of Rats Live on No Evil Star (try reading it backward), the most recent recording ...

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Album Review

Darrell Katz and the JCA Orchestra: Rats Live on No Evil Star

Read "Rats Live on No Evil Star" reviewed by Jerome Wilson


Listening to Darrell Katz's music, it boggles the mind that he is not celebrated as one of the best jazz composers-arrangers around. He has been creating ambitious and accessible works full of humor, social conscience and creativity for decades in the Boston area with the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra and other groups, yet you rarely hear his name. His latest, Rats Live on No Evil Star, is typical of his work, big band jazz with heavy infusions of rock, blues ...

Album Review

Darrell Katz and OddSong: Jailhouse Doc With Holes In Her Socks

Read "Jailhouse Doc With Holes In Her Socks" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi


Darrell Katz è noto per la trentennale direzione della bostoniana Jazz Composers Alliance con cui ha inciso nove dischi ospitando musicisti prestigiosi come Steve Lacy, Muhal Abrams, Henry Threadgill, Sam Rivers o Tim Berne. In questo nuovo album l'orchestra (con Oliver Lake ospite) è però confinata a chiusura del lavoro, appena dopo un brano con il cameristico sestetto JCA Winds and Strings e dieci temi eseguiti dal nuovo organico denominato Oddsong. Questi è un singolare settetto formato da un quartetto ...

1
Album Review

Darrell Katz and OddSong: Jailhouse Doc With Holes In Her Socks

Read "Jailhouse Doc With Holes In Her Socks" reviewed by Jerome Wilson


Darrell Katz has been working in Boston for over 30 years compiling an impressive body of work as leader of the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra whose music has drawn from current events, literary works and anecdotes about Charles Mingus and Albert Einstein among other sources. On this new CD he revisits several of the compositions he's written for the Orchestra with a smaller seven-piece ensemble called OddSong. The makeup of this group is four saxophones, violin ,marimba and ...

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Album Review

Darrell Katz and the JCA Orchestra: Why Do You Ride?

Read "Why Do You Ride?" reviewed by Dave Wayne


Why Do You Ride?, a sweeping, poly-stylistic orchestral paean to bicycling, Albert Einstein, a certain orange kitty cat, and wrongly-attributed quotes (among other diverse topics) is the 10th album by Darrell Katz and his Jazz Composers' Alliance (JCA) Orchestra, which is also celebrating its 30th year of existence. Unlike most jazz artists of his generation, Katz--an excellent guitarist and long-time faculty member at Boston's Berklee School of Music--has resolutely stuck with the big band as his primary means of musical ...

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The Jazz Session #204: Darrell Katz

The Jazz Session #204: Darrell Katz

Source: AAJ Staff


Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Galeanthropolgy

JCA Recordings
2021

buy

Rats Live on No Evil...

JCA Recordings
2018

buy

Jailhouse Doc With...

Self Produced
2017

buy

Jailhouse Doc With...

Self Produced
2016

buy

Why Do You Ride?

Leo Records
2015

buy

Stories

Cadence Jazz Records
2013

buy

To An Angel

From: Rats Live on No Evil Star
By Darrell Katz

Jailhouse Doc With Holes in Her Socks

From: Jailhouse Doc With Holes In Her...
By Darrell Katz

Videos

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