With Facebook and Twitter going strong these days, it’s often easy to forget to update my website from time to time with client news and such.

Magos Herrera's "Distancia"

This past Wednesday morning, I got word from my main man Patrick Jarenwattananon at NPR Music that the anticipated review of Magos Herrera’s new disc Distancia was going to air on NPR’s All Things Considered that day, I was pretty stoked (to use the parlance of our times).  While performing that day’s other tasks (organizing a mailing with Stephen, preparing press releases and advance lists), I missed the story airing live on the radio but caught it online about an hour after it aired.  Reviewer Tom Moon’s enthusiastic review of the disc catapulted the CD straight to the Top 50 in Music on Amazon.com.  And as of tonight, almost 4 days later, Distancia still sits at #85 in the overall music rankings on Amazon and after a day-long reign on Thursday at #1 on the iTunes Jazz album chart (followed by most of Friday at #2), Magos is now at #6 on that chart.  Not too shabby.  Look out for Magos performing live at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on July 3rd and at the Montreal International Jazz Festival on July 12.

Steve Lehman at Columbia University

That NPR hit alone would have made for a great week for Fully Altered, but we also had some excellent press run in advance of saxophonist Steve Lehman’s forthcoming album Travail, Transformation and Flow (Pi Recordings), which is due out this Tuesday, June 9th.  There is also a show this Monday June 8th at (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York City, currently the only planned show with the full octet from the recording.  This challenging new album is the first jazz album to explore spectral harmony, a sound analysis process that is used to inform compositional and improvisational decisions.  Steve’s Monday show was given a Top Live Music preview in Time Out New York by David Adler and a starred listing in Friday’s New York Times by critic Nate Chinen.  In addition, Chinen put a laudatory blurb on the new album in his Playlist which ran in this weekend’s New York Times Sunday Arts & Leisure section (Page AR21).  That’s a pretty good week for Lehman and Travail, which two weeks ago was reviewed by New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff on the May 26th edition of WBGO’s The Checkout and interviewed by show creator and host, Joshua Jackson on the show’s June 2nd episode (both made an appearance on NPR Music’s brand spankin’ new jazz blog, A Blog Supreme). Rumor has it that the show will also be reviewed by a New York Times critic (fingers crossed).

Rudder's "Matorning"

And if that weren’t enough, we happen to know that Fully Altered client Rudder are also expecting a CD review to run on All Things Considered sometime this week or next from music contributor David Was.  And look for upcoming press breaks on Ultrahang, the newest album by Fully Altered client Chris Potter Underground, released via ArtistShare, including a 4 STAR review in today’s Detroit Free Press by Free Press jazz critic Mark Stryker.

Chris Potter's New Album, "Ultrahang"