By delarue, New York Music Daily
There hasn’t been a debut big band jazz recording as powerful, and lavish, and fun as Derrick Gardner and the Big Dig! Band’s first album, Still I Rise – streaming at Bandcamp – in a long time. Solos are brilliantly wild, Gardner’s compositions are colorful, unpredictable, explosive and have a frequently searing political resonance. It’s very brassy, as you would expect from a trombonist bandleader. Read more here.