Grammy Awards®
For Your Consideration
Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album
In February 2024, renowned hard-bop trumpeter/ flugelhornist, composer and educatorJim Rotondi released Finesse, an intricately interwoven masterpiece for big band and orchestra arranged and conducted by Vienna’s conductor Jakob Helling, featuring Steve Davis, Dick Oatts and Danny Grissett.
Making Finesse...
Reviews
"A jazz-with-strings album of the first order, Finesse features a consortium of great Viennese classical freelancers, led by concertmaster Joanna Lewis. But given that Rotondi’s legacy in New York stretches back decades, he also enlisted a slice of the Big Apple’s foremost jazz talent – Steve Davis, Dick Oatts and Danny Grisset – as soloists on top of the sumptuous strings".
Morgan Enos – London Jazz News
"With Finesse, Rotondi has crafted an album that balances a deep symphonic sophistication with a lithe, small-group jazz interplay, and it's one the best of his career."
Matt Collar - All Music
"When you consider the demands of orchestral form, this work deserves respect. It’s a titanic undertaking of composition, arrangement, and orchestra direction to achieve such a brilliant result. It’s sheer genius! "
Thierry de Clémensat – Paris Move
"Finesse... reflects Rotondi’s three decades of experience in straight-ahead big bands, finally getting a large-group vehicle of his own to test drive for the first time"
Gary Fukushima – Downbeat Magazine (April 2024)