Stan Martin

Geoff Stradling: Nimble Digits

by Jack Bowers
May 18, 2024

Remember the good old days when bandleaders would give a downbeat and their bands would start swinging and keep on doing so until their audiences literally begged for more? Welcome to the past--present tense--courtesy of pianist Geoff Stradling's superb Los Angeles-based StradBand, which swings heartily and with seldom a pause on its radiant and power-laden introductory ...

The L.A. Sessions at Capitol Studios

By Steve Spiegl

Label: Sorcerer
Released: 2020
Track listing: All the Things You Are; Gardens of Cordoba; Ave Maria; Penna Tiranna; Benedetta Suite; Parsifal; Tosca; Cartagena Night; Turandot.

The Steve Spiegl Big Band: The L.A. Sessions at Capitol Studios

by Jack Bowers
November 19, 2020

Almost every Monday morning for the past fifty years, composer-arranger Steve Spiegl convened his Los Angeles-based big band for a rehearsal session, assembling, for most of that time, at the Musicians Union in Hollywood and, more recently, at its new home in Burbank. When Spiegl decided in 2019 to pull up stakes and move northward to ...

Swingin' on a Riff . . . Hangin' by a Thread?

by Jack Bowers
June 14, 2013

Betty and I returned to Albuquerque on Memorial Day after attending Swingin' on a Riff, the latest in a series of marvelous semi-annual events presented by Ken Poston and the Los Angeles Jazz Institute for more than twenty years at venues in and around L.A. This one was held May 23-26 at the Los Angeles Marriott ...