jazz2love

Album:  Rezurrektion Artist:  Wayne Alpern Label: Henri Elkan Music Website:  www.waynealpern.com Reimagining compositions is a talent of arranger, composer and leader Wayne Alpern that has garnered him worldwide notoriety.  His 2023 offering Rezurrektion features a string quartet, the Sirius Quartet, that integrates jazz idioms into a classical repertoire.  The recording reconfigures 5 compositions of Mozart followed by a mash-up of works by Jonathan Larson and Edvard Grieg.  Another track is a reinterpretation of Duke Ellington's classic piece "Black Beauty" before closing with a reworking of George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess." The outcome is a lavish and bountiful feast that showcases Alpern's visionary inclination.  His penchant to meticulously knead chord patterns makes each note call to the listeners attention with effortless persuasion.  Listeners are naturally drawn to the music, hanging onto each phrase, each transition, each crescendo, ...

Album: The Curtis Session Artist:  The Dover Quartet Label:  Bimperl Entertainment & Media website:  www.doverquartet.com The elevating ride that string instruments produce is taken to a new level of creativity by the Dover Quartet whose latest release The Curtis Session features compositions that the quartet composed while riffing ideas at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.  Comprised of violinists Joel Link and Bryan Lee, viola player Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, and cellist Camden Shaw, the Dover Quartet create four movements based on the theme of "Dreams from Life Awake."  The foursome demonstrate their ingenuity to play irregular meters while countering each other's performance, creating sonic formations that resemble a Jenga tower as each member builds on the other's notes and phrases. Like a glade of spires and valleys, abstract figures along "Dreams from life awake: I. reverberation-exploration-flow" rise and dissolve spontaneousl...