Album Review: Skeleton from Wayne Alpern
Album: Skeleton Artist: Wayne Alpern Label: Self-Released Website: www.waynealpern.com From the fancy-free musings of the horns trotting along "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," penned by Joe Zawinul, to the smooth serenade of the horns illuminating Frank Loesser's number "I've Never Been in Love Before," composer-arranger Wayne Alpern's latest release Skeleton displays reverence for classic straight-ahead jazz idioms. Treated with valor and esteem, Alpern's cover of popular jazz standards along with his original composition "Blue Bones" takes audiences back to the foundation of jazz. Alpern's original work "Blue Bones" may have been written a century after many of the other works on his CD but listening through the recording, no one could detect the generation gap. The well-scripted bopping of the trombones recalls of vaudeville style minstrels that entertained and amused audiences across the globe, and so too does Alpern's...