Guitarist Eric Hofbauer and Drummer Dylan Jack's PERIOD PIECES is due out on October 22, 2021 via Creative Nation Music

Guitarist Eric Hofbauer and Drummer Dylan Jack Present Period Pieces, due out on October 22, 2021 via Creative Nation Music

Creative Nation Music is delighted to announce the release of Period Pieces, the latest artistic offering from Boston-based guitarist/composer Eric Hofbauer and drummer/composer Dylan Jack. Working in constant dialogue with pulse, form and ‘freeness’, this album represents a joyous return to collaborative creativity after a dearth of opportunities for improvisers to meet face-to-face during the pandemic. A collective effort from the very start, Hofbauer and Jack are joined by two Boston compatriots – Tony Leva (bass and electronics) and Jerry Sabatini (trumpet).

Over the past twenty-five years, Hofbauer has established himself as a key force on the Boston jazz scene, leading to nominations for both the 2019 and 2017 DownBeat Critics’ Poll for Rising Star – Guitar. Hofbauer’s shape-shifting work (from solo guitar through combos to large ensemble projects) has brought about relationships with several highly creative improvisers; as well as close work with Han Bennink, Roy Campbell Jr., John Tchicai and Cecil McBee. Period Pieces brings together a quartet of musicians with a long history of creative collaboration. 

Period Pieces also resembles the line-up of the Dylan Jack Quartet, a project that has recently focused on recording Jack’s own compositions. Here, it’s shimmied around to create a wholly different sound. Four musicians come together, first and foremost as listeners, and each brings a distinct musical personality to the party.

Though it might not seem it at first, at the record’s heart is a joyful sense of letting go. “Dylan organized the studio date and presented this idea to reunite and just improvise. At the core, this made the album a collaborative session, where everybody brought ideas and a willingness to experiment to the table,“ says Hofbauer. But it wasn’t just the case of everybody bringing a dish to this musical dinner party – during lockdown “everyone had been practicing in the kitchen, mastering a new cocktail or a fancy new dessert.” For Hofbauer, the space afforded by the Covid-19 pandemic encouraged a foray into the world of pedals and electronics, opening up a world full of gnarly possibility and transmuting his clean sound into something capable of more gory, overdriven timbres.

Dylan Jack, Eric Hofbauer - courtesy of Creative Nation Music

The compositions that result all orbit around ideas of pulse, moving in and out of focus as a way of generating tension, release and eventual consonance. “Spontaneous arrangement” might be a way of describing the loosely planned structures, although considerable efforts are made in post-production to shape the whole sound. The group also borrows closely from cinematic aesthetics – “we do consider carefully the process of creating these vignettes – spaces for atmosphere that run parallel to a more visual perspective where one establishes mood in a shot then cuts to another scene to create drama.” 

Two short snippets encapsulate the album’s essential aims. Shortly into ‘Awake Again’, “the listener thinks ‘ah, we have arrived at the solid grooving center of this piece’ – then it goes through several more surprise rhythmic contractions of pulse before the beat drops in again for the guitar solo.” Elsewhere, ‘Finding Baraka’ captures the collage-informed process of cutting, looping and combining parts of their all-day session. “Dylan found these sonic moments from across the session that fit so seamlessly together to the point that post-production was an extension of the composing and arranging pre-baked into the improvisations”.

“The whole album creates a longer narrative – its almost a suite more than a collection of tracks,” says Hofbauer, as ‘Sighs in the Millions’ immediately sets the scene; ambiguous pulses crop up through the spacious opener. That scene flips as ‘Awake-Again’ begins, bringing the quartet’s conversational improvised lines within the confines of a noir groove, breaking down even further as Hofbauer’s frenetic soloing shines and harmonica-like growls of Sabatini give a long-lasting anguish to proceedings. ‘Tread Lightly’ picks up that deconstruction, based on a premeditated drone loop, and featuring his own modified slide that casts in many musical directions from Robert Johnson to Penderecki’s squealing white noise. ‘Tread Lightly’ is paired with its answering couplet – ‘With a Purpose’, a funereal duet between Hofbauer and Sabatini full of morose feeling.

By the time the album gets to ‘Rational Instability’, “this is the sound of the ensemble peaking.” Driving grooves and fast bebop lines cascade through the lucid textures, snapping through a number of different feels to give a wholesale chaotic feel. ‘Finding Baraka’ (from Sufi meaning ‘a vessel through which force flows’) establishes an introverted reflective base level; restless grooves are stacked on top. It also captures a lot of the small-group dialogue key to the collective’s philosophy on arrangement – moving away from what Hofbauer dubs “orchestrational drones” by exploring the possibilities of ultra-intimate combinations. Grunts of excitement in Leva and Sabatini’s duelling opening on ‘Restlessness’ eventually morph into screams of tortured extended techniques, characterful improvising and scuttling ricochets, culminating in a tongue-in-cheek bass finish. ‘Galumphing Demons’ sees the album’s rhythmic orbit come full circle, driven by Jack, in a high-octane frenzy of distorted lines. In a word – a ruckus.

“It’s an album of dialogue between listeners, as we pit space against density to create drama and momentum through the album,” says Hofbauer of the album. But there’s an inescapable human aspect to proceedings too. “It’s a communion, a coming together of colleagues and close friends that truly missed each other, and who missed creative music-making, and the excitement of those intersections.”

1 Sighs In The Millions (5:59)

2 Awake-Again (7:00)

3 Tread Lightly… (8:36)

4 With A Purpose (6:58)

5 Rational Instability (7:30)

6 Finding Baraka (9:40)

7 Restlessness (8:58)

8 Galumphing Demons (5:02)

All Songs Composed and Arranged by Eric Hofbauer (Spice-E Music, ASCAP), Dylan Jack (Helmet Cat Music, ASCAP), Tony Leva and Jerry Sabatini (BMI)

Produced by Eric Hofbauer (erichofbauer.com) and Dylan Jack (dylanjackmusic.com). Recorded, Mixed, Mastered by Warren Amerman at The Rotary Records (rotaryrecords.com). Design by Benjamin Shaykin (benjaminshaykin.com). Liner Notes by David R. Adler (adlermusic.com).

Creative Nation Music

Pocket Aces: Eric Hofbauer / Aaron Darrell / Curt Newton - Cull The Heard (September 7, 2018)

Pocket Aces brings together three renowned members of Boston’s jazz and improvised music scene: guitarist Eric Hofbauer, bassist Aaron Darrell, and drummer Curt Newton. Their music extends the rich jazz trio tradition, where each voice balances and strengthens the others through contrast, surprise and clairvoyant interaction. Although freely improvised, the music of Pocket Aces is given to bouts of form, groove, and crafty melodies. Distillation of ideas, with a premium on space and tone palette, provides a strong coherence as the trio navigates the familiar and unfamiliar. 

Newton describes the group’s approach as “consciously compositional….favoring space over density, distillation over stream-of-consciousness interaction, and fragility over bluster. I think this gives our free playing a strong sense of coherence.” Each of the eight tracks on Cull the Heard highlights a different side of this spontaneous intention. He notes how “each of us can set up a rhythmic territory, a cell or cycle, and let the parts slide, collide and click against one another: tracks like ‘Chinook,’ for instance. Other times we’re more of a single-pulse mind, like ‘Crash Course’ or ‘Plain Sight.’” 

Pocket Aces: Eric Hofbauer, Curt Newton and Aaron Darrell

“If there is a tradition we take a page from, it would be akin to the Art Ensemble of Chicago or Instant Composers Pool,” says Hofbauer, “but obviously we don’t sound anything like them. We do value the idea of ‘instant composition’ in that we want to improvise tunes. We create forms and melodies that we develop, deconstruct and recapitulate just like a written work. We put a premium on timbre, contrast, dynamics and pulse in a way that can’t be easily linked to any given ‘style.’ Yet everything we do is connected to jazz and blues, and those languages are never out of our hearts, spirits or fingers.” 

All Compositions by Pocket Aces

Eric Hofbauer, guitar (erichofbauer.com)

Aaron Darrell, bass (aarondarrellmusic.com)

Curt Newton, drum set (curtnewton.com)

Produced by Curt Newton, Eric Hofbauer and Aaron Darrell

Recorded (06/18/16), Mixed & Mastered at The Dimension Sound Studios (dimensionsoundstudios.com) by Dan Cardinal

Artwork & Design by Georgia Bowder-Newton

Liner Notes by David Adler (adlermusic.com)

Bios:

Eric Hofbauer (guitar) “has become a significant force in Boston’s improvised-music scene,” declares Stereophile’s David R. Adler. “His aesthetic evokes old blues, Americana, Tin Pan Alley, bebop, and further frontiers. There’s a rule-breaking spirit but also an impeccable rigor, a foundation of sheer chops and knowledge, that put Hofbauer in the top tier of guitarists.” Hofbauer has been integral to Boston’s jazz scene for twenty-five years, as a musician, bandleader, organizer and educator.

Recently recognized in the 2017 DownBeat Critics’ Poll for Rising Star – Guitar, he is widely known for his solo guitar work, featured in a collection of solo guitar recordings (American Vanity, American Fear, American Grace and Ghost Frets), and as the leader of the Eric Hofbauer Quintet (EHQ). The EHQ’s series of four “Prehistoric Jazz” recordings, featuring Hofbauer’s jazz arrangements of Stravinsky, Messiaen, Ellington, and Ives, placed consecutively on the Boston Globe’s Top 10 Jazz Albums of the Year lists, and received critical acclaim from leading press such as Downbeat, The Wire, and Tone Audio. Hofbauer has also performed and recorded alongside such notable collaborators as Han Bennink, Roy Campbell, Jr., John Tchicai, Garrison Fewell, Cecil McBee, George Garzone, Sean Jones, John Fedchock, Steve Swell and Matt Wilson.

Aaron Darrell (bass) was born in Selma, Alabama in 1987. A lifelong performer, Aaron has participated in countless choirs, and performed touring operas as a child. He received his bachelor’s Degree from Berklee College of Music with a concentration in Composition and Performance on the Double Bass. He has studied bass with Dave Santoro, Victor Wooten, Drew Gress, Katy McGinn, John Lockwood, and Chuck Israels.

Other influential instructors were Yakov Gubanov, David Aiken, Ed Tomassi, Greg Osby, and Hal Crook. Aaron has performed his own original music and led workshops about improvisation, ensemble playing, and composition in over 25 U.S. states and several countries in Europe. He has currently integrated into the Boston music scene and can be found performing with his own projects widely varying in genre and appeal, as well as groups with Charlie Kohlhase, Curt Newton, Pandelis Karayorgis, Jorrit Dijkstra, Eric Hofbauer, Forbes Graham, Garrison Fewell, and more. Aaron also enjoys spending time drawing, reading, sharing food, learning about sustainability, health, and increasing inner resonance.

Curt Newton (drums) coaxes whispers from drumsets and swing from stacks of rattly stuff, weaving varied musical traditions together in the spirit of serious playfulness. Over the past three decades, Curt has performed across the U.S., Canada and Europe and appears on over 30 CDs with some of contemporary music's leading figures including Ken Vandermark, Joe Morris, Nate McBride, Pandelis Karayorgis, Charlie Kohlhase, Dave Bryant, and Steve Norton, and most recently as the drummer in the Eric Hofbauer Quintet.

About one live performance, the Chicago Reader’s Peter Margasak wrote “Newton dazzles...He exhibited breathtaking restraint, breaking down time with a subtle hand, tapping out painterly splashes of sound." Curt studied privately with Bob Gullotti, has a Master's degree in Jazz Performance from New England Conservatory, and once upon a time created a solo drumset arrangement of Lutoslawski's String Quartet (available on Bandcamp). Curt is also a climate change community builder and activist, and the proud parent of two musically-inclined young adults.

American Vanity explores the many faces of hubris in american culture, government and society. the concept of vanity is fascinating to me. at first, america’s bloated egotism and its’ presumptuous smug attitude, reoccurring themes in the history of our politics and culture, was plenty of material to get my blood boiling and the project started. the real challenge was to dig deeper, and get past the finger pointing and realize that vanity just may be a corner stone of the american way. in fact, our whole way of life, perhaps staring with those overly-confident and demanding colonists refusing to pay taxes , is built on vanity. however, excessive egotism suggests emptiness and hollowness, that some argue has irreparably damaged our culture. “the masses are asses” or so the saying goes, and is seems we get dragged from fad to fad because the media tells us what to do and who to listen to and what to wear etc… along the way, some innovative gems of “americana” become more than just passing fancies signifying nothing, but instead offer us a glimpse into a time that was or a time that is or even can be. my goal was to mine for these “gems” through improvisation, composition and re-interpretation. as americans we are simultaneously victims and purveyors of vanity and this...  more

1. The Fad 01:54

2. Coke (for our addicts) 02:06

3. Gnossienne #1 04:56

4. Mandrake 03:55

5. American Eulogy 02:17

6. Better Get Hit in Your Soul 03:39

7. BA-DEE Image 02:28

8. Greensleeves in Vermont 03:37

9. Ode to Little Drummer Joy 03:20

10. $...(part 1) 00:37

11. Old Man River (for our lost ones) 06:19

12. New Coke (part 1) 00:36

13. Driftin' On A Reed 02:11

14. American Innocence 02:29

15. $...(part 2) 00:40

16. Dukes of Hazzard 03:22

17. Take on Me 03:41

18. Femme Fatale 03:37

19. New Coke (part 2) 00:48

20. Display Window Strut 03:30

all arrangements by eric hofbauer, tracks 1,2,5,7,10,12,14,15,19,&20 by hofbauer (spice-E music, BMI), c+p 2002 Creative Nation Music Productions

recorded by eric hofbauer at CNM studios (aka his living room), Somerville, MA, summer 2002

mastered by warren amerman and eric hofbauer at rotary records, Springfield MA, oct. 2002

graphic design by rich cole

produced by eric hofbauer