Saturday, December 3rd 2011, 8PM
(from left to right: Rez Abbasi, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Dan Weiss)
Photo credit: Jordan Hemingway
The Indo-Pak Coalition, led by critically-acclaimed Indian-American saxophonist and Guggenheim fellow Rudresh Mahanthappa, with Pakistani-American guitar virtuoso Rez Abbasi and rising tabla star Dan Weiss, synthesizes jazz with the astutely improvised musical forms of South Asia, transcending any preconception of Indo-jazz fusion. This ambitious trio will be appearing on December 3rd at the Flushing Town Hall.
Their groundbreaking debut album, Apti (Innova, 2008), reached #1 on the JazzWeek World Music radio charts and enjoyed long stints in the top ten of the JazzWeek Jazz, CMJ Jazz, and ChartAttackradio charts. Rolling Stone, the New York Times, and Downbeat among others have raved about both the ensemble and the album.
Apti clearly blazes new trails into the future of jazz in the 21st Century. While most attempts to engage jazz and South Asian music often feel incoherent, with musicians from neither side able to comfortably bridge the musical divide, the music on Apti transcends any previous notion of ‘Indo-Jazz fusion’. In melding Indian concepts of melody and rhythm with his inventive style as a jazz composer and improviser, Mahanthappa has masterfully provided a compositional context that has brought out spectacular interplay within the ensemble. Apti is a major achievement in cross-cultural musical creativity and a landmark contribution to modern music that bears no precedent.
***
“In this stark, dynamic trio of alto sax, guitar and tabla, Mahanthappa’s horn does heavy lifting, fusing the raga-sitar aspirations of late-period Coltrane and the vocal flight of Karnatic hymns.” -Rolling Stone
“At various points, the Indo-Pak Coalition sounds like an Asian answer to Steely Dan, while at others Mahanthappa’s compositions coil and uncoil, building and revealing drama not unlike soundtrack music. Of course, this is all part of the hybridity that Mahanthappa is going for, and his hunger for new sounds is no-doubt fueling his growing reputation as one of jazz’s leading lights.” -New York Press
“With [Apti], alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahant-happa approaches the cross-pollination of Indian music and jazz from yet another angle…Mahanthappa’s vision succeeds again.” -JazzTimes
“Mahanthappa is heralding a new reality in jazz, where the music exists on equal footing with another hearty tradition, and something genuinely new results.” -Downbeat
“[Rudresh Mahanthappa's "Indo-Pak Coalition"] featuring Rez Abbasi on guitar/sitar and Dan Weiss on tablas, is less about texture and more about the individual players and the interaction of their individual lines. The Indo-Pak Coalition is ready and able to pull from every area of jazz, finding it a simple matter to draw from whatever bag gives the music a good ride.” -PopMatters
***
Flushing Town Hall
137-35 Northern Blvd.
Flushing, NY 11354
30% Off!
To receive this offer, mention the code “EB2011″
(excluding table package)
Buy tickets now!
4 EVENINGS OF NEW MUSIC WITH 4 DIFFERENT BANDS; FEATURING GREENLEAF PORTABLE SERIES ARTISTS
From December 8-11 at Jazz Standard in New York City, prolific jazz trumpeter and label owner Dave Douglas will present four evenings of new music with four different bands, including artists from hisGreenleaf Portable Series (GPS). OnDecember 8, Douglas will feature a new group, Key Motion Quintet, with Donny McCaslin, Adam Benjamin, Tim Lefebvre, and Mark Guiliana, performing music from Douglas’ Keystone and McCaslin’s Perpetual Motion. On the following nights, Douglas will viagra three groups featured on the first three volumes of his GPS 2011 digital EPs, offered in the new limited edition box set, Three Views: So Percussion (December 9),Orange Afternoons with Ravi Coltrane,Vijay Iyer, Linda Oh and EJ Strickland(December 10), and Brass Ecstasy withLuis Bonilla, Vincent Chancey, Marcus Rojas and Rudy Royston (December 11).
Ever since Douglas launched his Greenleaf Music imprint in 2004, the label has been ahead of the curve in embracing new media and technology. Greenleaf was one of the first jazz labels to have a blog and a web store that catered to listeners wanting various high-quality digital formats. In doing so, Douglas recognized the importance and value of not only delivering music, but also offering artistic insight into the process of being a creative musician and consumer preference for differing audio fidelities.
Douglas acknowledges the importance of technology to him as an artist, “It feels like the relationship of the artist to the listener is changing, especially in the recorded domain. Listeners have more choice in how they interact with music, and an artist can provide more choices and more immediacy. I feel like new formats are an extraordinary opportunity for music and sound artists. In the case of Three Views, the GPS system gave me the spark to ignite these three sets of new music.”
ORIGINALLY DIGITAL-ONLY EPs COMPOSED BY DOUGLAS AND PERFORMED IN INFORMAL ‘SESSIONS’ WITH BRASS ECSTASY, RAVI COLTRANE, VIJAY IYER, LINDA OH, MARCUS GILMORE, AND NEW MUSIC ENSEMBLE SO PERCUSSION
SERIES LAUNCHED VIA NEW GREENLEAF WEBSITE, MOBILE SITE,
CLOUD & UPCOMING iPHONE/iPAD APPS
Ever since pioneering jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas launched his Greenleaf Music imprint in 2004, the label has been ahead of the curve in embracing new media and technology. Greenleaf was one of the first jazz labels to have a blog and a web store that catered to listeners wanting various high-quality digital formats. In doing so, Douglas recognized the importance and value of not only delivering music, but also offering artistic insight into the process of being a creative musician and consumer preference for differing audio fidelities.
Douglas acknowledges the importance of technology to him as an artist, “It feels like the relationship of the artist to the listener is changing, especially in the recorded domain. Listeners have more choice in how they interact with music, and an artist can provide more choices and more immediacy. I feel like new formats are an extraordinary opportunity for music and sound artists. In the case of Three Views, the GPS system gave me the spark to ignite these three sets of new music.”
Greenleaf’s activities over the last seven years represent a major paradigm shift – especially for the jazz world – in the way music is consumed, delivered and complemented with “extras.”
The latest development in delivering new music in a new way is the Greenleaf Portable Series. Launched in June 2011, the series digitally delivers volumes of new music, composed and arranged by Douglas and performed with a cross-section of the finest musicians in contemporary jazz and beyond — including Douglas’s Brass Ecstasy, a quintet featuring Ravi Coltrane on tenor saxophone and pianist Vijay Iyer, bassist Linda Oh and drummer Marcus Gilmore, as well as the new music ensemble So Percussion.
Three Views finds the prolific trumpeter and composer at his highest artistic peak. The records seem immediate with all the top-tier players playing with an intensity not often heard on present day jazz recordings.
For Volume 1, Rare Metals, Douglas convened his newest band, Brass Ecstasy—fresh off the acclaimed release United Front: Brass Ecstasy at Newport—for recording 5 new compositions and an arrangement of the classic Strayhorn tune “Lush Life.”
Following Volume 1, Douglas invited Ravi Coltrane, Vijay Iyer, Linda Oh, and Marcus Gilmore to play new music for this special quintet. Upon release on iTunes, Orange Afternoons shot to #1 on the iTunes jazz chart generating a buzz rarely seen in the jazz world, especially for a digital-only release.
For the final GPS release of 2011, Bad Mango the quartet So Percussion joined Douglas in the studio for what is a truly unique album even for the ever-searching trumpeter. Playing new compositions along side works from Douglas’ album Witnessand from his early 1990s band Tiny Bell Trio, Douglas is accompanied by marimba, musical saw, glockenspiel, and many non-traditional percussion instruments.
Douglas unveiled the GPS via a newly developed website optimized for mobile platforms, a cloud player that gives instant access to Greenleaf’s growing catalogue as well as an upcoming free app for the iPhone and iPad.
In addition to developing new distribution methods, Douglas is exploring creative avenues that might present themselves as a result of the new format. The Greenleaf Portable Series is the first result – shorter sessions, recorded in a day, presented more quickly to the market without the delays of putting out a CD.
“I liked the idea of streaming the music directly to listeners, and it seemed that CD length might not be the best representative in the new medium,” explains Douglas.
“Also the idea of shorter, more informal sessions appealed as it harkens back to the way jazz albums used to be recorded. The GPS gave me an outlet for a lot of new tunes and presented me with a way to record with some musicians I really admire but with whom I rarely get to play,” remarks the trumpeter.
Though Greenleaf recognizes the demand for digital and alternative content delivery methods, the label and its owner still also love the real deal, so Greenleaf is offering a very limited edition box set version of the first three volumes of GPS with beautiful artwork and packaging that our customers have come to appreciate from Greenleaf.
Three Views represents not only the three different vantage points presented here of Douglas as a composer, but also the three ways listeners can now listen to Greenleaf products – on a computer, on a mobile device or on their stereo.
The Jazz Pianist’s Recording of J.S. Bach’s Iconic “Goldbergs”
Along With Tepfer’s Own Improvised Variations to Bach’s
OUT TODAY VIA SUNNYSIDE RECORDS
Dan Tepfer has created a kaleidoscopic experience with his solo album Goldberg Variations / Variations, the jazz pianist approaching J.S. Bach’s masterpiece – one of the classical canon’s most totemic works – as an inspiring font for creativity. Interspersed with his affectionate interpretation of the complete “Goldbergs” are his own improvised variations on Bach’s variations. No Jacques Loussier-style swinging of the classics, Tepfer’s variations are marked by a ruminative joy, spiced with contemporary dissonances and a deep feel for the source as timeless music beyond category. Goldberg Variations / Variations will be released on CD and digitally by Sunnyside Records in the U.S. on November 8th, 2011. In Europe, the album will be issued via Sunnyside/Naïve on November 10th.
Although the Goldberg Variations are beloved now as an entrancing, virtually sacred work of art, Johann Sebastian Bach published the score – consisting of an “aria” and a set of 30 variations – in 1741 as a keyboard study, with the piece later nicknamed for the harpsichordist who might have been its first performer. From Glenn Gould to Pierre Hantaï, the modern world’s greatest classical artists have performed and recorded the “Goldbergs.” Investing himself totally in music he has known since childhood, Dan Tepfer recorded his completely solo, even engineering the late-night sessions himself for total immersion in the process. The result is both utterly individual and genuinely moving.
Goldberg Variations / Variations is the 29-year-old, New York-based Tepfer’s sixth album as leader or co-leader, following three heading a trio, one of solo piano improvisations, and another featuring duets with veteran saxophone luminary Lee Konitz. Known for his rare improvisational gift and a complex yet melodic approach to music-making, the prize-winning pianist has been hailed as “a player of exceptional poise” by The New York Times, while DownBeat extolled his “ability to disappear into the music as he’s making it.”
For those who deem Bach’s music untouchable, they should remember Stravinsky’s rejoinder to those who criticized his transformation of Baroque compositions in Pulcinella as disrespectful: “You ‘respect,’ but I love,” he said. As for Tepfer, he says: “What I’m doing is definitely loving. But instead of recording the Goldberg Variations and then writing lengthy liner notes about how I feel about them, I’m expressing how I feel about them in music, with my improvisations on Bach’s variations. One challenge was switching gears – playing this classical music that’s a real test for me and for so many pianists, then the next minute really improvising and being free.”
With Bach using the same chord progression throughout the Goldberg Variations, his musical process wasn’t as different from jazz as it might seem. “That is really what we do in jazz, particularly when playing standards,” Tepfer explains. “We take the chord progression of a tune, and it’s often as simple as Bach’s Aria, and we make variations on it. Lee Konitz has been playing the same tunes his whole life. One of the amazing things about him is you’ll play the same song with him on tour night after night – say, ‘All the Things You Are’ – and it will be really different every night. So if you recorded all of those and put them end to end, it might sound like what Bach had done with the ‘Goldbergs,’ taking one simple piece of material and weaving all these different emotional states into it. With my improvisations, it was a case of, how much more diversity can I get out of this chord progression? And what’s really important to me as an improviser is to have a voice. So I’m reacting to Bach with my own tone, my own vocabulary.”
Tepfer recorded the album alone – producing the sessions himself in the middle of the night – in the Yamaha Artist Services Salon in Manhattan, playing one of Yamaha’s new CFX hand-built concert grand pianos. “I think if Glenn Gould were recording the ‘Goldbergs’ with our technology today, he would’ve wanted to do it just as I did,” Tepfer says. “He loved to work late at night, basically alone in the studio with just the engineers in the booth that he had to have. In the situation that I had, I could work alone all night long if I wanted. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone, there wasn’t any pressure. There was just me, the piano and me listening to myself. I could take my time figuring things out. It was ideal.”
Goldberg Variations / Variations will elicit surprise in many listeners that what might seem like a crazy idea works so beautifully. It might even help prompt some to reconsider concepts of genre – that music doesn’t necessarily have to be classical or jazz, that sometimes it can be just music. Mostly, Tepfer hopes listeners are moved by the album, “because I think the Goldberg Variations are one of the most profoundly affecting masterpieces,” he says. “From this tiny piece of material, Bach was able to express this incredible range of feeling, from a visceral delight to the most introspective sadness. And the fact that all the variations flow together and make this complete whole is a way for Bach to convey how all these different emotions are part of life and that they belong together. The contrast is what makes a complete life, and a complete work of art.”
On Thursday, November 10 at Harlem Stage in New York, saxophonist, composer and arranger Miguel Zenón will perform music from Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook, his critically acclaimed new recording of classic Puerto Rican songs for Marsalis Music. Joining Zenón on the date is his core quartet featuring Luis Perdomo (piano), Hans Glawischnig (bass), and Henry Cole (drums).
Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook is comprised of ten pieces, two each by Bobby Capó, Tite Curet Alonso, Pedro Flores, Rafael Hernández, and Sylvia Rexach, who Zenón refers to as “the George Gershwins, Cole Porters and Jerome Kerns of Puerto Rican song,” and it features his regular quartet augmented by a 10-piece wind ensemble. The music was arranged by Zenón and orchestrated by Argentine pianist, composer and arranger Guillermo Klein.
“This project grew out of my interest in exploring the history and development of The Puerto Rican song,” says Zenón. “… I started focusing on the similar characteristics between The Puerto Rican Songbook and The Great American Songbook, not only musically, but also in terms of cultural impact. From there on, the project started to take shape.”
Zenón has explored his musical heritage previously in albums such as Jibaro (2005), in which he revisited the country music of Puerto Rico, and last year’s Esta Plena, in which he reinterpreted the traditional plena style.
In 2008, Miguel Zenón was one of 25 individuals selected to receive the MacArthur Fellow Genius Grant. In 2011, he founded a program called “Caravana Cultural,” with the purpose of presenting free jazz concerts to rural areas of his native Puerto Rico, exposing the communities to high caliber performances and special guests, as well as utilizing local young musicians.
A founding member of the groundbreaking SFJAZZ Collective, in 2012, Zenon will expand his role as the new resident artistic director.
Click the image to hear Miguel talk about the making of Alma Adentro
The biographies of the five composers featured on Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook can be read here in English and Spanish.
Release Date: August 30, 2011 (Marsalis Music)
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“On Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook, [Miguel] Zenón’s longstanding quartet – augmented by a 10-piece wind ensemble – offers boldly virtuosic reworkings of two tunes apiece from five of Puerto Rico’s most beloved songwriters. Zenón keeps the melodies recognizable but takes rhythmic and harmonic liberties in making the songs his own…everything here is dear to Zenón, and it shows.” – Bill Beuttler, Boston Globe
“Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook is the third record [Miguel Zenón]’s made that analyzes Puerto Rican music from the ground up and connects it, with great originality, to new jazz practice. This is a sumptous record…It contains sequences that sound admirable but ordinary – an able, flexible new jazz quartet, doing things we’ve possibly heard before – and then pockets of real brilliance.” – Ben Ratliff, The New York Times
“Zenón’s far from the first jazz musician from Latin America to winningly unite jazz and the folkloric and popular musics of his homeland. But with Alma Adentro, Zenón has set a superb standard for this kind of endeavour, and fashioned something beautiful, important and lasting.” – Peter Hum, Ottawa Citizen
(Biophilia Records / Distributed by Palmetto Records)
Almazan Leads His Trio & String Quartet at
The Village Vanguard: October 11-16
with a Live Webcast via NPR Music & WBGO on October 12, 9:PM (ET)
iTunes Features “The Vicarious Life” as the iTunes Discovery Download
for week of October 11-17
Physical CD: November 22, 2011
Fabian Almazan’s debut, Personalities (Biophilia), reveals his penchant for musical storytelling with well-crafted originals and well-chosen covers. Born in Cuba, raised in Miami and based in New York City, the 27-year-old pianist and composer has apprenticed with Terence Blanchard and is a recent fellow of the Sundance Film Composer’s Lab.
iTunes has announced they will feature the track “The Vicarious Life” from Personalities as a weeklyiTunes Discovery Download. This is remarkable not only because this is Almazan’s debut recording but because it is very rare for instrumental jazz to be given such a wide platform.
Almazan’s trio is comprised of bassist Linda Oh and drummer Henry Cole, both Manhattan School of Music classmates. “They are both very open-minded musicians with a fearless ability to turn on a dime if the music takes a different direction,” Almazan says with praise. “Needless to say, they have profound command over their respective instruments.” The trio is augmented by a string quartet featuring violinists Meg Okura and Megan Gould, violist Karen Waltuch and cellist Noah Hoffeld.
True to the album title, the music is about people that have impacted Almazan’s life so far. The inspirations for his compositions range from tributes to his grandmothers and mother (“Grandmother Song,” “Una Foto”), overheard conversations about atheism (“Sin Alma”), stage parents at adolescent piano recitals (“The Vicarious Life”) and socio-economic reflections (“H.U.Gs“). About the latter, a tune that finds Almazan unravelling lines on Fender Rhodes, he says, “H.U.Gs stands for Historically Under-represented Groups. As I understand the acronym, it is used in scientific papers that deal with the environmental conditions in lower socio-economic communities. I wanted to write something that would embody the struggle that generations of abused and manipulated people have had to overcome to achieve equality.”
The New York Times – Friday, October 7, 2011
by Ben Ratliff (full article)
Almazan’s choice of non-original repertoire is imaginative, in two cases reflective of his Cuban heritage. Carlos Varela’s “Bola de Nieve” (literally, “snowball,” but in this case, the nickname of Ignacio Villa) is one of Almazan’s earliest memories of attentively listening to music, and is offered here in homage to both Varela and Villa. The classic danzon “Tres Lindas Cubanas” “connects me back to my music and my family,” he says.
The album opens with a stunning rendition of the third movement of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 10, Op. 118. The trio and string quartet are processed by Almazan through delay and distortion. He tips his hat to guitarists Ryan Ferreira, his guide through “pedal land,” and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. Almazan refers to this type of electronic processing as “a new door in front of me that I didn’t even know existed.” It is a strong opening statement, and like the rest of the album, executed from a place of deep honesty. “I had to be clear with myself about what type of emotions I wanted to musically convey that would best introduce my aesthetics to the listener,” Almazan explains.
The evocative narratives on Personalities reflect Almazan’s self-described “international citizen” worldview, as well as his work as a film composer. His relationship to music can be summed up thusly: “I have learned that music has an uncomplicated purpose, which is to make you feel something. There are an endless amount of options on how to achieve that simple purpose.” On his remarkable first record, Fabian Almazan presents ten such options.
Juxtaposing the Jazz Pianist’s Recording of Bach’s Iconic “Goldbergs”
With His Own Improvised Variations
Out November 8 On Sunnyside Records
Dan Tepfer has created a kaleidoscopic experience with his solo album Goldberg Variations / Variations, the jazz pianist approaching J.S. Bach’s masterpiece – one of the classical canon’s most totemic works – as an inspiring font for creativity. Interspersed with his affectionate interpretation of the complete “Goldbergs” are his own improvised variations on Bach’s variations. No Jacques Loussier-style swinging of the classics, Tepfer’s variations are marked by a ruminative joy, spiced with contemporary dissonances and a deep feel for the source as timeless music beyond category.Goldberg Variations / Variations will be released on CD and digitally by Sunnyside Records in the U.S. on November 8th, 2011. In Europe, the album will be issued via Sunnyside/Naïve on November 10th.
Although the Goldberg Variations are beloved now as an entrancing, virtually sacred work of art, Johann Sebastian Bach published the score – consisting of an “aria” and a set of 30 variations – in 1741 as a keyboard study, with the piece later nicknamed for the harpsichordist who might have been its first performer. From Glenn Gould to Pierre Hantaï, the modern world’s greatest classical artists have performed and recorded the “Goldbergs.” Investing himself totally in music he has known since childhood, Dan Tepfer recorded his Goldberg Variations / Variations completely solo, even engineering the late-night sessions himself for total immersion in the process. The result is both utterly individual and genuinely moving.
Goldberg Variations / Variations is the 29-year-old, New York-based Tepfer’s sixth album as leader or co-leader, following three heading a trio, one of solo piano improvisations, and another featuring duets with veteran saxophone luminary Lee Konitz. Known for his rare improvisational gift and a complex yet melodic approach to music-making, the prize-winning pianist has been hailed as “a player of exceptional poise” by The New York Times, while DownBeat extolled his “ability to disappear into the music as he’s making it.”
For those who deem Bach’s music untouchable, they should remember Stravinsky’s rejoinder to those who criticized his transformation of Baroque compositions in Pulcinella as disrespectful: “You ‘respect,’ but I love,” he said. As for Tepfer, he says: “What I’m doing is definitely loving. But instead of recording the Goldberg Variations and then writing lengthy liner notes about how I feel about them, I’m expressing how I feel about them in music, with my improvisations on Bach’s variations. One challenge was switching gears – playing this classical music that’s a real test for me and for so many pianists, then the next minute really improvising and being free.”
Photo credit: Vincent Soyez
With Bach using the same chord progression throughout the Goldberg Variations, his musical process wasn’t as different from jazz as it might seem. “That is really what we do in jazz, particularly when playing standards,” Tepfer explains. “We take the chord progression of a tune, and it’s often as simple as Bach’s Aria, and we make variations on it. Lee Konitz has been playing the same tunes his whole life. One of the amazing things about him is you’ll play the same song with him on tour night after night – say, ‘All the Things You Are’ – and it will be really different every night. So if you recorded all of those and put them end to end, it might sound like what Bach had done with the ‘Goldbergs,’ taking one simple piece of material and weaving all these different emotional states into it. With my improvisations, it was a case of, how much more diversity can I get out of this chord progression? And what’s really important to me as an improviser is to have a voice. So I’m reacting to Bach with my own tone, my own vocabulary.”
Tepfer recorded the album alone – producing the sessions himself in the middle of the night – in the Yamaha Artist Services Salon in Manhattan, playing one of Yamaha’s new CFX hand-built concert grand pianos. “I think if Glenn Gould were recording the ‘Goldbergs’ with our technology today, he would’ve wanted to do it just as I did,” Tepfer says. “He loved to work late at night, basically alone in the studio with just the engineers in the booth that he had to have. In the situation that I had, I could work alone all night long if I wanted. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone, there wasn’t any pressure. There was just me, the piano and me listening to myself. I could take my time figuring things out. It was ideal.”
Goldberg Variations / Variations will elicit surprise in many listeners that what might seem like a crazy idea works so beautifully. It might even help prompt some to reconsider concepts of genre – that music doesn’t necessarily have to be classical or jazz, that sometimes it can be just music. Mostly, Tepfer hopes listeners are moved by the album, “because I think the Goldberg Variations are one of the most profoundly affecting masterpieces,” he says. “From this tiny piece of material, Bach was able to express this incredible range of feeling, from a visceral delight to the most introspective sadness. And the fact that all the variations flow together and make this complete whole is a way for Bach to convey how all these different emotions are part of life and that they belong together. The contrast is what makes a complete life, and a complete work of art.”
Out October 11 on Cryptogramophone Records, and
Featuring Nels Cline, Alex Cline, John Fumo, David Witham, and Joel Hamilton.
Gauthier & Cryptogramophone curate The Stone (NYC) – November 1-13
Open Source is the sixth recording by violinist / composer / producer Jeff Gauthier. His ensemble of almost 20 years, The Jeff Gauthier Goatette,features guitarist Nels Cline, his twin brother Alex Cline on drums and percussion, trumpeter John Fumo, David Witham on piano and keyboards, andJoel Hamilton on bass. Gauthier’s music draws from as many influences as the title Open Sourcesuggests. From jazz to classical, to fusion to “new” and improvised music, Gauthier’s compositions are informed by the many great artists with whom he has worked.
As a violinist Gauthier has performed and recorded with artists like Yusef Lateef, Adam Rudolph, Nels Cline, Alex Cline, Mark Dresser, Vinny Golia, and many others. As a producer or executive producer, he has worked with such luminaries as Alan Broadbent, Alex Cline, Mark Dresser, Peter Erskine, Bennie Maupin, Myra Melford, Jimmy Rowles, Stacy Rowles, Alan Pasqua, Don Preston, Jenny Scheinman, Scott Amendola, Ben Goldberg, and guitarist Nels Cline for whom he has produced 6 recordings. Gauthier is also founder of Cryptogramophone Records, and co-producer of the Angel City Jazz festival in Los Angeles. Gauthier will be curating The Stone in New York City the first two weeks in November, 2011. The Goatette will perform Saturday, November 5th.
Regarding the title Open Source, Gauthier says, “This is not music for others to tinker around with asOpen Source might imply. It’s music drawn from an open source of creativity and style, as interpreted by musicians who have the skills to interact with each other in the moment. Over time, this interaction can develop into a musical language that grows and evolves. In the case of the Goatette, this language has even developed a new dialect drawn from the gradual introduction of electronics into our musical vocabulary. All I have to do is say ‘Spaceprov’ and everyone knows what I want.”
The Goatette will celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2012, but the origins of the group go back even farther, to the band Quartet Music led collectively by Gauthier, the Cline brothers, and bassist Eric von Essen. Formed in 1979, Quartet Music recorded 4 albums (all currently out of print) and toured the west coast over 12 years. Gauthier continues, “I’ve been playing music with Nels and Alex since we were in our early 20s. They have a musical connection that can only come from a lifetime of creating music together, aided perhaps by sharing the same DNA as twins. Joel Hamilton and David Witham have played in my band for 18 and 20 years respectively. John Fumo and I discovered we had a special musical connection while working in Steuart Liebig’s band Quartetto Stig for 5 or 6 years, as well as in Alex Cline’s “Band of the Moment.”
As a composer and improviser Gauthier often uses counterpoint to integrate the newest voice (trumpet) into the Goatette. Regarding his influences as a composer, Gauthier says, “Having grown up as a violinist, the music of J.S. Bach is the bedrock of my being. I also studied counterpoint and composition with teachers like Harold Budd, who has great skills as a composer and teacher. Harmonically, I’ve been influenced by the music of Bill Evans, Igor Stravinsky, Ralph Towner, Olivier Messiaen, and John Coltrane, to mention only a few. And it’s impossible not to mention the influence of Eric von Essen, who was perhaps my greatest musical teacher.”
Open Source is a mature work by an eclectic and experienced musician who values human interaction in music making above all else. Having forged careers as producer and presenter to compliment his performing life, Gauthier has been able to work with some of the most creative musicians on the planet, thus paving the way for his own musical growth and renewal. With the support of these longstanding musical relationships, the open source of creativity continues to flow.
Commissioned by the University of Rochester’s
Rare Books and Special Collections Department
for the 100th Birthday Celebration of Poet / Visual Artist Kenneth Patchen
Out October 11 on Cuneiform Records
“Soon it will/Be showtime again,” recites Kurt Elling at the outset of The Claudia Quintet’s sixth CD,What Is the Beautiful? “Somebody will paint beautiful faces all over the sky.”
The sentiment expressed by those lines, penned by poet/visual artist Kenneth Patchen, captures something of the anticipation proffered by the release of a new Claudia album. Bandleader/percussionist John Hollenbeck’s evocative, richly luminescent compositions definitely possess the suggestive power to encourage listeners to look heavenward, searching for those faces in the sky.
Richard Peek, director of Rare Books and Special Collections at the University of Rochester Libraries, describes Patchen’s body of work as one that “defies easy categorization and is undeniably his own.” Perhaps in that one statement, more than in any aesthetic choice or thematic material, we can find the common ground between poet and composer.
Most of the material on What Is the Beautiful? was commissioned by the University of Rochester for its 100th birthday celebration of Patchen in 2011. Not particularly conversant with the poet’s work, Hollenbeck began a crash course and found himself immediately drawn to the breadth of Patchen’s themes.
“He has a wide palette, which I like,” Hollenbeck says. “There are a lot of really dark, political poems, but then he has whole collections of almost childlike drawings with very short, funny poems. And usually in every collection there are lyrical love poems, always dedicated to his wife, which are more flowery, almost old-fashioned. I really started to love the humor, the darkness, and the sincere love he had for his wife.”
Born in 1911, Patchen was an avant-gardist with strong pacifist leanings. His work bears an obvious kinship with the Beats, though he dwelt on the periphery of that scene, never one to align himself with any movement or affiliation. He was an early experimenter in the fusion of jazz and poetry, often reciting his work against a bebop backdrop (slyly alluded to here in the eccentric swing during the opening moments of “Showtime”). A debilitating back injury kept him away from public engagements for most of his life, and he spent more than a decade bedridden before his death in 1972.
Hollenbeck immediately thought of singer Kurt Elling to give voice to these poems – wholly unaware that Elling is something of a Patchen aficionado. “Kurt is a scholar with this stuff,” Hollenbeck says. “He knew Patchen and knew exactly what to do. He’s amazing.”
On his own recordings, Patchen recites his work in a gruff monotone; Elling, on the other hand, inhabits these poems as an actor would a role. On “Showtime,” he welcomes listeners with the bold enunciation of a television emcee; he lurches through “Opening the Window” with an intoxicated stagger; and he recounts the menacing absurdities of the surreal “Job” with dueling voices: his own and a blue-collar Chicago accent, transforming the piece into a duet of narrator and character.
Surprisingly, Hollenbeck discovered that engineer Andy Taub was also a Patchen fanatic, with his own collection of the poet’s works. It was his idea to alternate Elling’s two readings. “He was really into the material and was blown away by the way Kurt was reading the poems,” Hollenbeck recalls. “More than your average engineer, he was really involved in the creative process.”
Vocalist Theo Bleckmann, probably Hollenbeck’s most frequent collaborator, was also enlisted to lend a dreamier, more song-like atmosphere to several of the poems. “Theo has a very gentle, open, vulnerable approach,” Hollenbeck says. He uses that voice to stunning effect on “The Snow Is Deep On the Ground,” which conjures the image of swirling snow and the crystalline hush of a fresh snowfall on a still morning.
Two of the session’s three instrumental tracks were commissioned by the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival and inspired by the Scottish island of Islay, renowned for its wintering geese. “Mates For Life” unfolds with a rich narrative progression, while “Flock” lives up to its name with a frenzy of percussive fluttering.
As on their previous CD, Royal Toast, the Claudia Quintet is again supplemented by a +1, in this case Philadelphia-based pianist Matt Mitchell, a member of saxophonist Tim Berne’s Adobe Probe who has collaborated with the likes of Ravi Coltrane, Ralph Alessi, Mark Helias, Ari Hoenig and Josh Roseman. His virtuosity and spontaneity make him a perfect fit with the long-running core group – Hollenbeck on drums, Drew Gress (Tim Berne, Ravi Coltrane, Fred Hersch) on bass, Matt Moran (Slavic Soul Party, Mat Maneri, Ellery Eskelin) on vibraphone, Ted Reichman (Anthony Braxton, Marc Ribot, Paul Simon) on accordion, and Chris Speed (Bloodcount, Yeah No, Human Feel) on clarinet and tenor sax.
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