In review--Bumble Bees and Dragonflies
Jazz/Big Band Asuka Kakitani Jazz Orchestra Bloom Nineteen-Eight Records My first musical glimpse of Japanese orchestra leader/big band composer Asuka Kakitani’s Bloom showed promise. I admire a woman with musical ambition who leads men with horns through complex musical architecture. However, I have had to listen to the recording in segments since I’ve not been able to sit through its entirety in one sitting. The problem for me is not the soft wall of horns which includes a dozen or so flugelhorns, trombones, trumpet and saxophones and woodwinds thrown into the mix, but the bop saxophone solos that often ride over slightly dissonant passages, such as one-third of the way through Dragonfly’s Glasses or on the titular track. However, I enjoy the mercurial opening of that song. And the horn solo in Dance One with the orchestra playing lightly in the background sounds marvelous. However, Islands in the Stream , peppered by tr...