From the sound of it, the future of the large group ensemble is clearly in good hands with the New Jazz Composers Octet, a combination of old school horns and creative young jazz musicians. The NJCO ...

SFJAZZ, which has expanded its scope in recent years to become a major year- round operation, takes another big step with the creation of the SF Modern Jazz Collective, a high-powered octet whose ...

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... The passage of time has not been kind to Louis Spohr. Although he was one of the most sought-after composers of the first half of the 19th century, the ...

World-renowned clarinetist and composer Bill Smith, whom jazz legend Dave Brubeck once called “one of the all-time greats,” died Saturday, Feb. 29, at his Seattle home, of complications from prostate ...

Rather than going with the common straight-ahead formula of head-solos-head, the New Jazz Composers Octet prefers ensemble counterpoint in which agreed-upon changes add a sense of the exotic. Shifting ...

Even though Dave Brubeck had a stellar octet, the eight-person ensemble is an uncommon configuration in jazz. Saxophonist Dave Pell and his troupe of top-notch Hollywood arrangers also handled the ...