1. Improvisation 39:05
Ellery Eskelin - tenor saxophone
Matt Moran - vibraphone
Peter Evans - piccolo trumpet
The Hell's Kitchen Cultural Center / Rhythm in the Kitchen Festival
Church for All Nations, NYC, 2012
Photo © Jeff Burns
Showing posts with label Ellery Eskelin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ellery Eskelin. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 19, 2022
Monday, January 3, 2022
Ellery Eskelin - From the Archives: Ellery Eskelin, Erik Deutsch, Allison Miller - Live in NYC, 2010 (January 2022)
1. Improvisation One 20:36
2. Improvisation Two 15:51
3. Improvisation Three 43:14
Ellery Eskelin - tenor saxophone
Erik Deutsch - organ
Allison Miller - drums
Brecht Forum, NYC, 2010
Recorded by Scott Friedlander
Sunday, January 2, 2022
Ellery Eskelin - From the Archives: Ellery Eskelin w/Andrea Parkins & Jim Black + Jessica Constable - Live in Paris, 2010 (January 2, 2022)
1. Improvisation One 45:17
2. Improvisation Two 51:34
3. Encore 04:24
Jessica Constable - voice
Ellery Eskelin - tenor saxophone
Andrea Parkins - keyboards and sampler
Jim Black - drums and percussion
Group improvisations around music by Jessica Constable
Paris, France, 2010
Ellery Eskelin - From the Archives: Ellery Eskelin w/Andrea Parkins & Jim Black + Jessica Constable - Live in Amsterdam, 2004 (January 2, 2022)
1. It's a Samba 10:50
2. 43 RPM 09:03
3. I Should Have Known 08:13
4. 48 A & B 08:05
5. Plastiche 06:32
6. How Do I Know 05:56
tracks 1 & 2:
Ellery Eskelin - tenor saxophone
Andrea Parkins - keyboards and sampler
Jim Black - drums and percussion
tracks 3, 4 & 5:
Jessica Constable - voice
Ellery Eskelin - tenor saxophone
Andrea Parkins - keyboards and sampler
Jim Black - drums and percussion
Friday, December 31, 2021
Ellery Eskelin - From the Archives: Ellery Eskelin, Chris Lightcap, Billy Mintz - Live at Cornelia Street Cafe in NYC, 2012 (December 2021)
These performances are free improvisations. They each involve a sort of meditation on or poetic homage to certain classic 20th century popular and jazz compositions. In this way they function a bit like musical contrafacts, pieces of music historically played by jazz musicians in which the melody of a standard tune is replaced with something new and the existing harmonic form utilized as a vehicle for improvisation. In our case it’s even looser than that. You will hear some quotations and references but each of these long form improvisations might best be thought of as a weather pattern, a mix of conditions in which elements come and go but the overall focus is on the big picture.
1. Improvisation: Happenstance (Just One of Those Things) 25:56
2. Improvisation: Endless (How Deep is the Ocean) 16:11
3. Improvisation: Fortune (Just in Time) 18:55
4. Improvisation: Question (What is this Thing Called Love) & Aspiration (My Ideal) 34:13
5. Improvisation: Monk (We See) 28:32
Ellery Eskelin - tenor saxophone
Chris Lightcap - bass
Billy Mintz - drums
Cornelia Street Cafe, NYC, 2012
Recorded by Jimmy Katz
Monday, December 27, 2021
Ellery Eskelin - From the Archives: Trio New York - Live in Antwerp, 2013 (December 27, 2021)
De Singer, Antwerp, Belgium, 2013
1. Improvisation / Celestial (The Midnight Sun) & Regret (After You've Gone) 27:39
2. Improvisation: Flame (Flamingo) & Happenstance (Just One of these Things) 29:33
3. Improvisation: Coordinates (East of the Sun), Potential (If I Had You) & Monk (We See) 46:09
4. Improvisation: Aspiration (My Ideal) 08:33
Ellery Eskelin - tenor saxophone
Gary Versace - Hammond organ
Gerald Cleaver - drums
Ellery Eskelin - From the Archives: Trio New York - Live at Cornelia Street Cafe in NYC, 2010 (December 27, 2021)
Cornelia Street Cafe, NYC, 2010
Recorded by Jimmy Katz
1. Improvisation: Monk (Off Minor) & Rumination (Memories of You) 31:56
2. Improvisation: Conjuring (Witchcraft) 31:28
3. Improvisation / Desire (Lover Come Back) & Fortune (Just in Time) 01:06:23
Ellery Eskelin - tenor saxophone
Gary Versace - Hammond organ
Nasheet Waits - drums
Ellery Eskelin - From the Archives: Trio New York - Live in Montreal, 2012 (December 2021)
Recorded by John Klepko
Suoni per il Popolo Festival in Montreal, June, 2012
1. Improvisation / Regret (After You've Gone) 24:56
2. Improvisation / Monk (We See) 14:12
3. Improvisation / Spirits (Ghost of a Chance) 11:50
4. Improvisation / Aspiration (My Ideal) 09:15
5. Improvisation / Happenstance (Just One of Those Things) 22:07
6. Improvisation / Endless (How Deep is the Ocean) 10:44
7. Improvisation / Flame (Flamingo) 13:59
Ellery Eskelin - tenor saxophone
Gary Versace - Hammond organ
Gerald Cleaver - drums
Ellery Eskelin - From the Archives: Trio New York - Live in New Haven, 2012 (December 2021)
New Haven, 2012
1. Improvisation / Happenstance (Just One of Those Things) 22:44
2. Improvisation / Aspiration (My Ideal) 18:24
3. Improvisation / Monk (We See) 14:25
4. Improvisation / Watchful (I Cover the Waterfront) 18:12
5. Improvisation / Regret (After You've Gone) 21:54
6. Improvisation / Spirits (Ghost of a Chance) 20:32
Ellery Eskelin - tenor saxophone
Gary Versace - Hammond B3 organ
Gerald Cleaver - drums
Ellery Eskelin - From the Archives: Trio New York - Live in Switzerland, 2012 (December 2021)
Switzerland, 2012
1. Improvisation / Conjuring (Witchcraft) 23:04
2. Improvisation / Spirits (Ghost of a Chance) 11:45
3. Improvisation / Regret (After You've Gone) 15:57
4. Improvisation / Happenstance (Just One of Those Things) & Aspiration (My Ideal) 36:04
5. Improvisation / Monk (We See) 11:24
6. Improvisation / Watchful (I Cover the Waterfront) 10:09
Ellery Eskelin - tenor saxophone
Gary Versace - Hammond B3 organ
Gerald Cleaver - drums
Ellery Eskelin - From the Archives: Trio New York - Live at the 55 Bar in NYC, 2010 (December 2021)
These performances are free improvisations. They each involve a sort of meditation on or poetic homage to certain classic 20th century popular and jazz compositions. In this way they function a bit like musical contrafacts, pieces of music historically played by jazz musicians in which the melody of a standard tune is replaced with something new and the existing harmonic form utilized as a vehicle for improvisation. In our case it’s even looser than that. You will hear some quotations and references but each of these long form improvisations might best be thought of as a weather pattern, a mix of conditions in which elements come and go but the overall focus is on the big picture.
The 55 Bar NYC, 2010
1. Introduction 00:35
2. Improvisation / Rumination (Memories of You) & Desire (Lover Come Back) 46:18
3. Improvisation / Blues 11:11
4. Improvisation / Conjuring (Witchcraft) 17:36
5. Improvisation / Time Past (Yesterdays) & Coordinates (East of the Sun) 35:10
Ellery Eskelin - tenor saxophone
Gary Versace - Hammond B3 organ
Ted Poor - drums
Monday, December 20, 2021
Ellery Eskelin - From the Archives: Ellery Eskelin, Vincent Courtois, Sylvie Courvoisier - Live in NYC, 2007 (December 2021)
Recorded at Roulette, NYC, 2007
1. Improvisation One 31:18
2. Improvisation Two 27:20
3. Improvisation Three 12:12
Ellery Eskelin - tenor saxophone
Vincent Courtois - cello
Sylvie Courvoisier - piano
Ellery Eskelin - From the Archives: Ellery Eskelin & Sylvie Courvoisier - Live in Ukiah, 2005 (December 2021)
Penofin Jazz Festival, Ukiah California, 2005
1. Improvisation One 21:59
2. Improvisation Two 11:59
3. Improvisation Three 14:24
4. Improvisation Four 19:09
Ellery Eskelin - tenor saxophone
Sylvie Courvoisier - piano
Monday, July 19, 2021
Ben Goldberg - Everything Happens To Be. (BAG Production Records 2021)
The echoes of traditional jazz bounce off the walls of Ben Goldberg’s music. The music is warped and strange, as if buckling beneath the strain of being compressed to fit the length of the clarinetist’s latest recording. For this session, Goldberg collaborates with musicians who have a proven track record with that kind of approach. Guitarist Mary Halvorson, tenor saxophonist Ellery Eskelin, bassist Michael Formanek, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara traverse time and distance, recalling the sound of New Orleans one hundred years ago as they offer a vision of what it could become a hundred years from now.
1. What About 05:41
2. 21 06:14
3. Fred Hampton 04:48
4. Everything Happens To Be. 07:04
5. Cold Weather 06:23
6. Chorale Type 09:53
7. Tomas Plays the Drums 05:51
8. Long Last Moment 05:10
9. To-Ron-To 05:32
10. Abide With Me 01:10
Mary Halvorson - electric guitar
Ellery Eskelin - tenor saxophone
Michael Formanek - bass
Tomas Fujiwara - drums
Ben Goldberg - clarinets
All compositions by Ben Goldberg, except "Abide With Me," by William Monk (by way of Thelonious Monk).
Recorded June 2018 at Firehouse 12 Studio, New Haven
Nick Lloyd, engineer
Mixed January 2021 by Michael Coleman
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
Jacob Sacks - Fishes (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018)
It makes so much sense for a Portuguese record label to release a new opus of the New York pianist and composer Jacob Sacks, considering his many connections with the jazz scene of this country and musicians like João Lencastre, Sara Serpa, André Matos, Gonçalo Marques and Demian Cabaud. Sacks is widely recognized as one of the most creative musicians in his hometown, and “Fishes” presents him in the company of other notable protagonists of the New York jazz scene, all of them members of the Clean Feed family: Ellery Eskelin, Tony Malaby, Michael Formanek and Dan Weiss. Here is a meeting of giants led by someone who has already covered the entire range of that music we call jazz, by the side of the greatest: Clark Terry, Joe Maneri, Charles Gayle, Paul Motian, Lee Konitz and too many more to mention, going from mainstream to the most audacious exploratory music. Inside this recording you’ll find all the identifying characteristics of Sacks’ personal style and more: harmonic subtleties, structural simplicity, deep and mysterious meanings, a refined sense of form, poetic beauty, rhythmic drive and lots of soul. You start to be overwhelmed by the way the little pieces of the clock function, until you let yourself go with the balance produced by the sculptures of time coming track by track.
Jacob Sacks piano
Ellery Eskelin tenor saxophone
Tony Malaby tenor & soprano saxophones
Michael Formanek bass
Dan Weiss drums
All compositions by Jacob Sacks; Jacob Sacks Compositions BMI
Recorded April 13th, 2017 at Systems Two Studios, Brooklyn, NY, by Mike Marciano | Mixing and mastered by Mike Marciano | Mixing and mastering produced by Chet Doxas
Produced by Jacob Sacks | Executive Producer by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Design by Travassos
Wednesday, September 12, 2018
Devin Gray, Ellery Eskelin, Michael Formanek, Dave Ballou in Dirigo Rataplan II (RATAPLAN RECORDS September 21, 2018)
Drummer-Composer Devin Gray reconvenes his Dirigo Rataplan band of master musicians - with Ellery Eskelin, Michael Formanek & Dave Ballou - for second album, Dirigo Rataplan II, due from Rataplan Records on Sept. 21
"A musician-drummer rather than a drummer-drummer, Gray is interested in making music that is deeply evocativeŠ shaped by a fizzing, often restless push-pull energy." - Jazzwise
Oct. 1 - Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME
Oct. 2 - University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH
Oct. 3 - University of Maine, Augusta, ME
Oct. 4 - SPACE, Portland, ME
Oct. 5 - Firehouse 12, New Haven, CT
Oct. 6 - An die Musik, Baltimore, MD
Oct. 7 - The October Revolution Festival, Philadelphia, PA
Dec. 1 - Greenwich Music House, NYC
Dec. 4 - Korzo, Brooklyn, NY
Dec. 6 - SMAK, Ghent, BE
Dec. 7 - Vortex, London, UK
Dec. 8 - AMR, Geneva, Switzerland
Dec. 9 - Geneva Conservatory of Music, Geneva
Dec. 10 -Villa Irniger, Zurich, Switzerland
Dec. 10 -Villa Irniger, Zurich, Switzerland
Now, after six years of intensive experience as a leader and sideman on both sides of the Atlantic, Gray has reconvened this all-star group for Dirigo Rataplan II, which will be released on CD, vinyl, digitally and for streaming via Rataplan Records on Sept. 21, 2018. Time Out New York has praised Gray's compositions for balancing "formal elasticity with a meticulous sense of pacing." The new album brims with more earworm melody, richly implied harmony and a loose-limbed sense of rhythm as something physical and flowing - as blood, as breath. Fans of jazz from Ornette Coleman and Henry Threadgill to Dave Holland and Craig Taborn will dig this organic mix of composition and improvisation, structure and freedom, atmosphere and dynamism.
About the evolution of Dirigo Rataplan and his writing for the band, Gray says: "I've become more at ease with following my natural artistic impulses. The experiences I've had over the past six years have been so inspiring - in the intense, ultra-energized New York jazz scene, of course, but also in Europe, where players in improvised music are so open to different genres and have this holistic approach to art and creativity. With Dirigo Rataplan II, there is more free improvisation in the music, but I also think the melodic fluidity between the composition and the improvisation is more seamless, with one flowing into the other in a way that I really like. This music is personal for me, but I want Mike, Ellery and Dave to do what it is they do, to maximize the pieces in the way that I know they can."
About working with Gray, Formanek says: "Devin has grown as a composer since that first quartet recording session in 2011, but most important, he has a much more evolved sense of who he is_ as a musician, and also of who we are in the band as improvisers. These instincts take time to develop, and it has been great to see that process unfold in both his playing and his composing. This music is free and open with a lot of room for improvisation, but the tunes also have an intrinsic rhythmic and melodic character to them, a color and energy. With the quartet having played together more now, the sessions for the new album felt even better."
Reflecting further on Dirigo Rataplan II, Gray concludes: "I don't set out to make jazz records, per se. I set out to make music, period - to capture the moment, the contemporary feel of the music, hoping that it can reflect in some small way how we live now and what we all have to deal with as human beings in the world."
In addition to Dirigo Rataplan, Devin Gray leads the quartet Relative Resonance, featuring Chris Speed, Kris Davis and Chris Tordini. Reviewing that band's eponymous Skirl Records album, All About Jazz said: "The vitality of Relative Resonance can't be deniedŠ the music here literally sparkles with wit and resourcefulness." On record, Gray has also led his Cloudsounds trio (with Ingrid Laubrock and Corey Smythe) and his quartet Fashionable Pop Music (with Tordini, Jonathan Goldberger and Ryan Ferreira). He recently released a hard-grooving digital single fronting his quartet Meta Cache with Jeremy Viner, Elias Stemeseder and Kim Cass.
As a sideman, Gray has recorded recent albums as part of Nate Wooley's Argonautica sextet, trumpeter Daniel Levine's trio Knuckleball (with Marc Hannaford) and a trio led by pianist Santiago Leibson (with Drew Gress). Of late, the drummer has played with Dave Liebman and Tony Malaby, along with touring Europe at the head of a trio with Speed and Gress. Gray's recent collaborators also include Gerald Cleaver, Uri Caine, Andrea Parkins, Satoko Fuji, Richard Bonnet, Daniel Guggenheim, Marc Ducret, Frank Gratkowski, Jacob Anderskov, Eve Risser and Susana Santos Silva.
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
Satoko Fujii: Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York - Fukushima (LIBRA RECORDS 2017)
Satoko Fujii Confronts the Fukushima Nuclear Accident
in Major New Work for Orchestra New York
Fujii's nuanced musical response to the disaster features some of her most powerful composing for improvisers
"Satoko Fujii's large ensemble music is one of a kind... For avant big band, this is an outfit on the cutting edge." -Grego Edwards, Gapplegate Music Review
"... a triumph of modern big band music, powerfully brought to life by an immensely talented group." -Stuart Kremsky, Journal of Jazz Record Collectors reviewing 2014's Shiki
"The Ellington of Free Jazz." -Cadence Magazine
Gathering together her all-star Orchestra New York to record for the tenth time, composer-pianist Satoko Fujii releases Fukushima (Libra, available December 15, 2017), a deeply moving and personal contemplation of the nuclear power plant disaster that shook Japan and the world in 2011. Fujii conducts the 13-piece ensemble in a monumental album-length composition that runs the emotional spectrum from despair to hope. With her characteristic attention to form, texture, and melody, she also provides a platform for some of New York's best improvisers, many of whom were founding members of the band 20 years ago, to make powerful statements of their own. The close collaboration between composer-conductor and performers results in one of the most riveting and moving socially conscious musical statements in recent memory.
"Right after the accident, I was afraid that we might not be able to live in Tokyo or even anywhere else in Japan," Fujii says. "A crazy-big area was affected by radiation and our country is not big. The distance between Tokyo and Fukushima is only around 200 kilometers. I felt hopeless. Of course, there were some people who didn't think it was a serious problem. The worst thing for me was the election right after the Fukushima accident. People still supported the politicians who said we need nuclear reactors. Other people in Japan thought differently and didn't support those politicians. And I have found people all over the world who think differently, as well. Fukushima is one of those issues that connects deeply with other matters in the world now-money, power, nationalism."
Fujii's musical response conveys the full weight of her feelings. Her assured handling of drama and pacing have never been more evident or used to such telling effect. The hour-long piece opens with the simple sound of air passing through instruments, echoing the sound of human breathing, creating a sense of vulnerable humanity that suffuses the entire work. "In the context of Fukushima, the breathing or air sound is peaceful, calm, and life-affirming for me," she says.
Shaping the music in real time as she conducts, Fujii leads the band on a spiritual journey through sorrow, rage, and ultimately to a stunning sense of hope and optimism. "I know we human beings can live brightly in any situation and circumstance," Fujii says. "I would like to believe it is not too late for us to make a change for the better."
Of course, Fujii's compositions are incomplete without improvised contributions from her remarkable ensemble. "My charts for large ensemble are not like classical music that can be played only by reading," she says. "With my charts, I need great improvisers to play and develop them. And with all these improvised parts, I need to conduct and give cues to the band to make the charts work, come together, and feel alive. I feel like the whole band is my instrument."
And what an instrument she has in this band, which includes saxophonists Tony Malaby and Ellery Eskelin, guitarist Nels Cline, trumpeters Dave Ballou and Natsuki Tamura, trombonists Joey Sellers, Joe Fiedler and Curtis Hasselbring, and the blue-chip rhythm team of bassist Stomu Takeishi and drummer Ches Smith, among others. With an ear for creative combinations of voices and contrasting textures and density, Fujii deploys them in different combinations, ranging from solo to duos and trios to full ensemble improvisation, throughout the course of the performance. Highlights include the close interplay between baritone saxophonist Andy Laster and guitarist Cline on the first track (the piece is continuous, but split into five tracks on the disc) and Oscar Noriega's melodic solo cradled by a lovely brass choir on Track 3. A sustained series of alternating passages for duet pairings of trumpeter Herb Robertson with drummer Smith and bassist Takeishi with guitarist Cline highlight the fourth track.
Fujii is also making available a second version of Fukushima, featuring her singing on Track 2. CDR copies of the vocal version of the composition can be ordered on her website: www.satokofujii.com/.
Fujii always tackles big musical ideas in her big band writing and sometimes turns to life's deepest spiritual issues as well. With this ambitious album, her first extended piece for large ensemble that addresses social issues, she has made another step forward with her art. "I just would like to have the listener take in the whole piece as an experience," she says, "and feel something."
Critics and fans alike hail pianist and composer Satoko Fujii as one of the most original voices in jazz today. She's "a virtuoso piano improviser, an original composer and a bandleader who gets the best collaborators to deliver," says John Fordham in The Guardian.
In concert and on more than 80 albums as a leader or co-leader, she synthesizes jazz, contemporary classical, avant-rock and Japanese folk music into an innovative music instantly recognizable as hers alone. Over the years, Fujii has led some of the most consistently creative ensembles in modern improvised music, including the ma-do quartet, the Min-Yoh Ensemble, and an electrifying avant-rock quartet featuring drummer Tatsuya Yoshida of The Ruins.
Her ongoing duet project with husband Natsuki Tamura released their sixth recording, Kisaragi, this year. "The duo's commitment to producing new sounds based on fresh ideas is second only to their musicianship," says Karl Ackermann in All About Jazz. Aspiration, a CD by an ad hoc band featuring Wadada Leo Smith, Tamura, and Ikue Mori, was released this year to wide acclaim. "Four musicians who regularly aspire for greater heights with each venture reach the summit together on Aspiration," writes S. Victor Aaron in Something Else.
She records infrequently as an unaccompanied soloist, but her latest solo album, Invisible Hand, led Dan McClenaghan in All About Jazz to praise her "stream of ideas, eschewing repetition and cliché in the crafting of her solo work, her loveliest and most accessible music." Fujii has also established herself as one of the world's leading composers for large jazz ensembles, leading Cadence magazine to call her, "the Ellington of free jazz."
Sunday, January 22, 2017
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Ellery Eskelin / Christian Weber / Michael Griener - Sensations of Tone (INTAKT RECORDS 2017)
"We dug more deeply into our improvisations and looked directly at this shared affinity for early jazz", Ellery Eskelin writes in the liner notes.
The Eskelin-Weber-Griener trio does not fuse the individual ways of playing, it alternates and contrasts. Each of the beautiful standards «Shreveport Stomp», «China Boy», «Moten Swing» and «Ain’t Misbehavin’» is followed by free improvisations. Ellery Eskelin writes: "Separating these performances (rather than mixing them) exposed the ways in which the same «tones» can elicit very different «sensations».
And depending upon your own subjective views, despite the obvious differences, there may well be unexpected similarities to be found." A wonderful music, beyond categories.
Soundsamples of this CD
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