Nov 23, 2020
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Personally Edited Content
The 2020 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll is out. Among the critics’ favorites are Jeff Parker's Suite for Max Brown, Rob Mazurek — Exploding Star Orchestra's Dimensional Stardust, Pat Metheny's From This Place, and Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride, Brian Blade's RoundAgain. Did they make your best of 2020 list? You can read the NPR list here.
The Jazz Journalists Association has announced the 2021 JJA Jazz Awards nominations, including three for Rob Mazurek for the new Exploding Star Orchestra album, Dimensional Stardust; all four members of the RoundAgain quartet, Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride, and Brian Blade; performers on Pat Metheny's album From This Place, including Metheny, Linda May Han Oh, and Grégoire Maret; Jeff Parker for Suite for Max Brown; and Cécile McLorin Salvant, whose Nonesuch debut album is forthcoming.
It was one year ago today: Rob Mazurek's Exploding Star Orchestra album Dimensional Stardust was released on International Anthem / Nonesuch Records. You can hear the album—arranged for eleven musicians, including Jeff Parker, with original texts by Damon Locks—here. "An intoxicating android of an album" —New York Times, Best Jazz Albums of 2020 "Mazurek stitches together an album of big, unanswerable questions and gorgeously orchestrated music, setting aside distinctions between genres, musicians, and points in time and space without losing sight of how each of these components is necessary to the whole." —Pitchfork, 8.0
“He has a warm, big, beautiful trumpet sound. He modeled himself after Miles Davis, Art Farmer, Chet Baker, these lyrical and beautiful trumpet players," Jeff Parker tells Andy Beta in a new Texas Monthly profile of Rob Mazurek, whose new Exploding Star Orchestra album, Dimensional Stardust,' is out on International Anthem / Nonesuch Records.
On Dimensional Stardust, Rob Mazurek “stitches together an album of big, unanswerable questions and gorgeously orchestrated music, setting aside distinctions between genres, musicians, and points in time and space without losing sight of how each of these components is necessary to the whole.” —Pitchfork, 8.0
R E C E N S I O N E Recensione di Mario Grella La musica colta di Rob Mazurek assomiglia molto alla musica e poco alla musica colta. Della musica colta non ha tutta la boriosa presunzione che spess…
Rob Mazurek's new album with Exploding Star Orchestra, Dimensional Stardust, is out now via International Anthem / Nonesuch Records, available here.
Mazurek arranged his pieces for eleven musicians, including Jeff Parker, and commissioned his long-time lyrics collaborator Damon Locks to draft original texts for the songs. The album recalls an array of Mazurek’s symphonic influences, from Béla Bartók to Morton Feldman to Gil Evans to Sun Ra to The Art Ensemble of Chicago and more. Opting to focus on tight ensemble orchestration over passages of open improvisation, he distills an orchestra of explosive improvisers into a graceful group exercise in melodic minimalism.