| Jazz |
In an era when university big bands are often overshadowed by professional ensembles or by the algorithm-driven logic of contemporary music consumption, it is easy to overlook just how essential academic jazz programs remain to the American musical ecosystem. Some of the most dynamic, risk-taking large ensembles in the country are not based in New York or Los Angeles, but on university campuses, where students blend discipline with the kind of fearless curiosity that only youth permits. Unbridled: The Flying Horse Big Band Meets George Garzone is a reminder of how alive, and how necessary, that tradition still is.
The album reached us later than expected, but any delay dissolves the moment the first track hits. What unfolds is not merely a polished university-band project; it is the sonic portrait of a program committed to cultivating musicians at a formative moment in their artistic lives. The Flying Horse Big Band, made up of University of Central Florida jazz studies students, plays with a conviction and urgency that reveal how deeply they understand both the privilege and responsibility of recording in a professional studio environment.
At the helm is Jeff Rupert, saxophonist, composer, educator, and one of the central figures in Florida’s jazz landscape. His résumé reads like a compressed history of postwar jazz: collaborations with Sam Rivers, Mel Tormé, Maynard Ferguson, Benny Carter. Rupert leads The Jazz Professors, the Flying Horse Big Band and the Florida Symphony Youth Jazz Orchestra, while also heading Flying Horse Records, a label that has steadily built a space for student-driven excellence in a crowded industry.
This time, Rupert sets the ensemble on a collision course with the music of saxophonist and composer George Garzone, a bold choice, considering the conceptual density and improvisational freedom that characterize Garzone’s work. A key figure in both the Boston and New York scenes, Garzone is best known for his decades-long tenure with The Fringe, the trailblazing trio formed in 1972 with bassist John Lockwood and drummer Bob Gullotti (later replaced by Francisco Mela). His collaborations with musicians such as Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Danilo Perez, Joe Lovano, Jack DeJohnette, Rachel Z, Peter Erskine and John Patitucci testify to his standing as one of jazz’s most searching improvisers.
His Triadic Chromatic Approach, a leap beyond traditional chord-scale vocabulary, remains a beacon for musicians looking to rethink linear improvisation. Those intrigued by the method will find his 2020 instructional DVD a revealing entry point into a musical mind that has shaped generations of saxophonists.
The album stakes its ambition early with “Giant Steps.” Taking on Coltrane’s famously demanding composition is a declaration: the students are not here to play it safe. The arrangement is crisp, expansive, and respectful of the original’s harmonic velocity, yet it leaves enough room for the improvisers to navigate the tune’s cyclical structure with surprising poise. It is a track that announces the band’s technical discipline and its willingness to inhabit the tradition without being constrained by it.
“Pharaoh’s Daughter” shifts into a different aesthetic register. The arrangement leans into its mystical lyricism, drawing out the horn section’s warmth while allowing for delicate moments of interplay. It is the kind of track that displays what university ensembles often do best: balancing lush textures with earnest exploration.
“Chasin’ Tail Reflections,” one of the album’s most adventurous moments, serves as a fitting homage to Garzone’s own penchant for restless improvisational motion. Angular lines flicker through the sections, and the soloists stretch into the tune’s open spaces with a sense of discovery that feels authentically Garzonian.
The emotional centerpiece, however, may be “It Gets Better.” Here the band tempers its technical bravura in favor of something more introspective. Rupert’s arrangement draws out the lyricism of the melody, allowing the woodwinds to shimmer and the brass to breathe rather than dominate. It is a reminder that pedagogical rigor, when guided by a sensitive hand, can also produce vulnerability and nuance.
“View of Heaven” returns to a more expansive palette, with harmonies that lift and widen as though opening a window. The ensemble’s phrasing, surprisingly mature for a student group, captures the composition’s contemplative character while maintaining a rhythmic elasticity that keeps the piece firmly grounded.
The album closes with “Impressions,” another nod to Coltrane and another test of the band’s stamina and interpretative insight. Instead of reproducing the original’s modal ferocity, Rupert reshapes the tune into a big-band framework that amplifies its urgency while allowing for bold sectional counterlines. The students respond with an intensity that makes the track feel like a culmination, not only musically, but pedagogically.
Across the album, the arrangements are remarkably well-calibrated: structured enough to frame the compositions, flexible enough to let improvisers breathe, and thoughtful enough to avoid the over-writing that can plague large-ensemble settings. You sense, throughout, that Rupert grants the musicians real space, not just to play, but to search.
Supporting this project is not simply an act of purchasing music; it is an investment in the future of the art form. Sales directly support UCF’s jazz studies program at a time when arts funding continually faces institutional erosion. In this sense, the album functions doubly: as a pleasurable listening experience and as a tangible contribution to the continuity of American jazz education.
What remains after multiple listens is a sense of continuity, of lineage. Jazz has always relied on the invisible thread connecting mentors to students, veterans to novices, traditions to innovations. Rupert and the Flying Horse Big Band have given us more than a document of student achievement. They have given us a snapshot of that transmission at work: a moment when young musicians, guided by an experienced hand, step into a demanding musical world and begin carving their own paths.
Some of these students will undoubtedly become notable voices in tomorrow’s jazz landscape. Others may take different artistic directions. But each leaves a trace on this record, a record that, in its blend of passion, discipline, and youthful freedom, reminds us why big bands still matter, and why jazz remains a living, evolving language.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, November 17th 2025
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Track Listing :
Giant Steps
Pharaoh’s Daughter
Chasin’ Tail Reflections
It Gets Better
View Of Heaven
Impressions
To buy “George Garzone & The Triadic Chromatic Approach”