Sonic Eel - Live in Brooklyn (September 2021)

1. Theme 37 - Chasinesque 05:58

2. Theme 38 - Six Bar Blues 06:30

3. Theme 39 - For Vaughn Benjamin 06:03

4. Theme 40 - Sarcasm 06:42

5. Theme 41 - For Cooper-Moore 06:55

6. All of Me and Mario 06:21

7. Recap 03:50

This is a live set from Scholes Street Studio in Brooklyn in October 2019.

Theme 37 - Chasinesque - An 8 bar head with a heart of 12 and some free time too as we keep Chasin' after Trane. I originally wrote this to be performed by Ras Moshe, Matt Lavelle, Rodney Chapman, Evan, Tcheser Holmes, and me at Muchmore's in December 2018.

Theme 38 - Six Bar Blues - Some 6 bars and some vamping on a piece originally written for Jon Panikkar's blues band during its January 2019 performance at Bushwick Public House.

Theme 39 - For Vaughn Benjamin - based on a riff by the reggae band Midnite which featured Benjamin as lead singer. He was a brilliant vocalist and wordsmith who died young at 50 in 2019.

Theme 40 - Sarcasm - written by my daughter Ariella, age 7 at the time. She carefully wrote out the stacked five-note clusters in each hand of the A section, which showed me how serious she was about the piece.

Theme 41 - For Cooper-Moore - dedicated to the gorgeously inventive pianist, legend of NYC free jazz from the loft scene down to today. He has blessed me with his example and also the generosity of kind words in support of my journey on piano.

We ended our set with an improvised piece which I subsequently titled All of Me and Mario for audible reasons.

The last track on the album is a solo piano improv I recorded during a February 2019 session at the City College of New York. This studio improv seemed to me to recap and condense some of the preceding sonic ideas heard on this live album.

Sonic Eel is:

Eric Plaks - piano

Evan Crane - bass

Leonid Galaganov - drums

Tracks 1-6 recorded October 27, 2019 by René Alain live at Scholes Street Studio, Brooklyn, as part of John Loggia's SonicXchange series.

Track 7 recorded in the City College of New York recording studio by Trevor Schlam.

Tracks 1-6 mixed and mastered by Jon Rosenberg

Track 7 mixed and mastered by Yoni Kretzmer (with additional mastering by Jon Rosenberg)

Production and design by E. Plaks

All music © Plaks - Crane - Galaganov, 2019

PREORDER

The Eric Plaks Trio - Within and After (September 2021)

Bomb Cyclone: Within and After

for Eric Plaks …

Music to step to / made by

this trio right here / and now;

they did the do for joyful time

the time we’re in / they’re in.

The lyrical slides

into percussive swing

led by ivory keys, double bass,

percussive everything.

Each measure finds the time

to cast aside the news, the rumors

that brush the cheeks of babes

and oldsters too.

Conjure up heroes of Free Jazz /

the New Music

honed from the flesh of Monsters:

The Tradition that sends in this music.

A trio, a transport away

from all the gossip

that scrapes along the chalkboard,

where instead this music prefers to glide.

- Barry Wallenstein

About the Music

1. Theme 31 – So-Called Bomb Cyclone (for Jorge Sylvester) – On a January day last year (2018), the New York area forecast called for an extreme weather event which never quite transpired – the piece is an E-flat minor groove with a more serene B-section about 4 minutes in (there is a return to the A section at the very end).

2. Theme 26 – Simplicity (for Barry Wallenstein) – Trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and I wrote this one when we appeared with Barry to accompany his poem of the same name at one of his always-packed gigs at Cornelia Street Café (of blessed memory). The form is an ever-increasing chain of notes selected from the 12 tones without repeating.

3. Theme 28 – H.R. 40 (for William Parker) – This is a march. H.R. 40 is the U.S. House Resolution to study the question of slavery reparations.

4. Theme 29 – Throw Your Boxes In The River - This piece represents a voyage down a river (maybe the Amazon as in the movie that inspired it, The Embrace of The Serpent) after one has jettisoned the trappings of “society”. It has written material at the start but then a deliberate decision not to return but rather to let the waters carry you where they will.

5. Theme 27 - For Anthony Braxton – I should really dedicate this one to outstanding bassist Sean Conly who played this through with me when I thought it was a mess that needed cutting and he told me to keep it all. The whole complex A section repeats once and then the improvisation expands upon the snippets that make the piece.

6. Petal Tune (Trio Improv) – Breathe, inhale, enjoy the trio opening out with no pre-set form.

7. Strolling With Tcheser (Duo Improv) – It’s been four years of playing with Tcheser on his returns to NY from various world tours with Irreversible Entanglements, but it was like this from the very first time! What an honor and a pleasure.

8. Theme 32 – For Horace Tapscott – This piece is dedicated to a pianist who doesn’t get enough recognition in the jazz world, the LA legend Horace Tapscott, a truly unique piano stylist, composer, and bandleader. The piece is an AABA in homage.

9. This Nearly Was Mine – For Cecil Taylor – A Rogers and Hamerstein hit from the musical South Pacific, this piece is soupy enough in its original version that you might think Taylor was being ironic or provocative when he chose to make it one of the few standards he ever recorded in 1960 on The World of Cecil Taylor (Candid Records), but he insisted that he simply loved the tune that’s all. I was lucky enough to meet and interview The Maestro several times when I was 20 and have benefited greatly from that period of direct interaction with him, as well as collecting and listening to all the music through the decades. Taylor passed on April 5, 2018 and this one’s for him. 

Tracks 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 by Eric Plaks

Track 4 by Eric Plaks and Tcheser Holmes

Track 6 by Eric Plaks and Aquiles Navarro

Track 9 by Rogers and Hamerstein

Recorded August 16, 2018 at Tedesco Studios, Paramus, NJ

Recorded and Mixed by Tom Tedesco

Mastered by Jonathan Goldberger

PREORDER

Eric Plaks - Chrysalis (OutNow Recordings 2018)

Album contains 9 full tracks.

On his tenth and most recent album, Chrysalis, on Out Now Recordings, Plaks offers a program featuring 6 written themes (including two which honor David S. Ware and Cecil Taylor) alongside three sumptuous and spontaneous group compositions. In addition to Plaks' provocative piano, listeners will be thrilled by the huge and gorgeous sound of Andrew Hadro on baritone sax, bass clarinet, and b-flat clarinet, the earthy bass of Evan Crane, and the supple and gem-like drumming of Leonid Galaganov. 

Pianist Eric Plaks was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and attended Harvard College. A student of the entire history of jazz, from the most traditional forms to the most modern styles of creative improvisation, Eric began his performing and recording career when he moved to Harlem in 1996. He has appeared in various formats and venues in New York City and the wider world. Eric is known for his distinctive form of pianism, in which listeners have heard the accents of Taylor, Shipp, Crothers, Abrams, Waldron, Hill, Monk, Ra, and Ellington.