SLUGish Ensemble
(SAN FRANCISCO, CA) — Slow & Steady Records announces the release of SLUGish Ensemble’s third recording In Solitude. Led by composer and multi-reedist Steven Lugerner, In Solitude brings the chemistry of the band’s 2022 album, Live At Sam First,under the hood of Oakland’s venerable 25th Street Recording studio, extending the signature SLUGish minimalistic math-jazz to Lugerner’s inspired original compositions. The ensemble again features an enviable cast of emerging young players on the West Coast: keyboardists Javier Santiago and Steve Blum, guitarist Justin Rock, bassist Giulio Xavier Cetto, and drummer Michael Mitchell.
Isolated in the first year of the pandemic, Lugerner penned seven sprawling compositions that take the listener on a aural journey through the windy, hilly streets of his Miralomaneighborhood in San Francisco, which he walked daily throughout lockdown. In Solitude finds peace in isolation.
“Like many, I often felt lonely at the onset of the pandemic” shares Lugerner. “I heard somewhere that it’s more appropriate to frame loneliness as ‘being in solitude.’ While loneliness is often a feeling of sadness, solitude is the acceptance of being on your own and being at peace with it.”
From the busy thoroughfare of Portola Drive, to the one-block-long La Bica Way, as well as the powerful “No Justice, No Peace” (dedicated to Ahmaud Arbury, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd), In Solitude cinematically captures the places and feelings of this unprecedented moment that changed the world.
Without the ability to gig or workshop music, Lugerner retooled his approach to composition. Recalling a class he took with saxophone legend Jane Ira Bloom at The New School in New York City, Lugerner revisited a particular writing method where he would “have a practice session, take a nap, wake up, turn on a recording device, press record, and capture three minutes of improvisation,” says the reedist. Bloom then told her students to “transcribe what you improvised, and identify something you liked that could be a melody, bass line or harmony in a new composition.”
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