No, I wasn't sure who Jason Jackson was either! But he's been one of the hardest-working, most respected trombonists in New York for the past 21 years. He's played in the Dizzy Gillespie and Roy Hargrove Big Bands and also with The Village Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, the Mingus Big Band and Charles Tolliver. And he works constantly on Broadway shows. Hence he's been able to record three mammoth orchestral record dates with large reeds, brass and string sections, as well as being able to call on Hargrove, Slide Hampton and others to make guest soloist appearances. The album is everything one would expect. Polished, thoroughly professional and musicianly. Jason himself has an immaculate tone and, as a Hampton pupil, is very much in the tradition of his mentor J.J. Johnson, but there's also the round sound purity of earlier artists like Tommy Dorsey. Slide Hampton scored ‘Tenderly’, but the majority of arrangements are by Jackson himself. He covers most of the big band bases, with some latin tracks like ‘Brazilian Bop’ and ‘El Huesero’, some ballads and an Afro-Cuban treatment of ‘April in Paris’. Very good of its kind.