Michael Rosen - Sweet 17 (2015)

Michael Rosen, tenor sax

Lage Lund, guitar

Ralph Alessi, trumpet

Domenico Sanna, piano

Matt Penman, double bass

Bill Stewart, drums

At 17, one’s dreams are alive and vivid and there’s always hope that one day these may come true, as they did for American saxophonist Michael Rosen. Rosen began studying the cello at the age of seven for two years before moving to the piano, and later at eleven he moved to the saxophone.

In the following years, he was first alto saxophone with the Middle School and High School Big Bands and received numerous state and local "best Soloist" awards. Initially, his interests lay more towards “progressive” groups such as Yes, Led Zeppelin, and Talking Heads, but when in 1985 Michael Rosen moved to Boston to study at the Berklee College of Music with renowned teachers such as Gary Burton and George Garzone, where he started to cultivate his soaring passion for the music of Charlie Parker, Joe Henderson, Miles Davis, Stan Getz and John Coltrane, and many other jazz artists who since then have been the main source of his inspiration.

Rosen has been living in Italy for almost 30 years and spends most of his time between Rome and London, highly active in the musical circles of both capital cities. Today, after 35 years of international success with 9 CDs as a leader, over 200 as a sideman, and having collaborated with leading artists of the day such as Bobby McFerrin, Sarah Jane Morris, Mike Stern, the Orchestra della Scala, and countless other American and European musicians, the seventeen-year-old boy with long and disheveled hair, now at the height of his artistic career, returns to New York, his hometown, to record his new music together with a stellar cast of jazz musicians. Sweet 17, as with all albums of the saxophonist / composer, leaves ample room for melodic beauty, fluidity and expressiveness, and introduces the more dynamic, modern and evolved compositions that Rosen has written so far, reflecting all the experience gained from the late 80s to date.

Accompanying him on this musical experience are highly-acclaimed musicians such as: Lage Lund (guitar), Ralph Alessi (trumpet), Domenico Sanna (piano), Matt Penman (double bass) and Bill Stewart (drums). It can be truly said that Michael Rosen’s dream, his "Sweet 17", came true and this album is the evidence.

01 Architextures (Michael Rosen)

02 Ebb Tide (Michael Rosen)

03 Sweet 17 (Michael Rosen)

04 Fair Weather Ahead (Michael Rosen)

05 Hopefully (Michael Rosen)

06 Safe As Houses (Michael Rosen)

07 39 Belgrave Square  (Michael Rosen)

08 Yellow Barn Road (Michael Rosen)

09 Jacoby’s Ladder (Michael Rosen)

10 The Way We Were (A. Bergman, M. Bergman, M. Hamlisch)

BUY THIS ALBUM!!!

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