Isaiah Collier & The Chosen Few - Lift Every Voice (February 22, 2022 DIVISION 81 RECORDS)

The power of song has connected many people since the dawn of

human existence. The world is full of challenges and the battles for

peace and unity are constant.

This song reflects still the desire of our ancestors.

A desire to unite all people in understanding. This recording was

crafted with the purpose to connect all people through sound. In the

setting of the legendary Van Gelder Studio bringing the sound Jazz

Standards and Spiritual Anthems together with one request, “Lift Every Voice and Sing”.

-Sonny Daze

We decided to go into the Studios of Rudy Van Gelders for a couple of reasons. That's because we were enduring another struggle in black culture/America and "Lift Every Voice" serves as an Ode to our survival. Our never yielding faith and also as a requiem for every person who was Black America and was slain unjustly. Persecuted, prosecuted, and even strip of dignities being seen as men, women, and children. "Lift Every Voice" reminds us to weather the storm and remember that the sun always comes shining through. "God of Our weary years, God of our silent tears" It's a song that speaks to everyone who faces adversity on a daily basis. Our hearts sing with determination and resolve. We will continue forward and beyond until victory is won.

-Isaiah Collier

1. Lift Every Voice 13:07

2. Guidance (Yoruba Soul Mix)

Isaiah Collier - Soprano Sax

Michael Shekwoaga Ode - Drums

Jeremiah Hunt - Bass

Mike King - Piano

Remix by Osunlade of Yoruba Records.

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Samuel Mösching - Ethereal Kinks (February 18th, 2022)

Guitarist Samuel Mösching’s fifth studio recording as a leader,

Ethereal Kinks,

features 11 new melodic originals and his inventive playing

on nearly all of the instruments.

Mösching’s relaxed style, melodic improvising,

and thoughtful solos are both accessible and creative.

A skilled jazz guitarist with his own sound, Samuel Mösching has used the Pandemic period to record his latest solo album, Ethereal Kinks. While four fine musicians (two bassists and two drummers) make one appearance apiece (there are guests on both bass and drums on “Winnemac”), otherwise Mösching plays all of the instruments (guitar, bass, drums and synth) in addition to contributing a full set of new compositions.

 

Ethereal Kinks begins with the joyful “No Dancing” (with bassist Renda “Victoria” Jackson) which is a fine showcase for the leader’s bright guitar tone and laidback musical personality. “Beauty And The Beast Roleplay” is a jazz waltz that builds up effectively while “Disconnect” is a medium-slow strut that is moody while having a strong forward momentum. The complex chord changes of “Mental Illness” contrast with its relaxed tempo while “Modesta” (with Juan Pastor on drums) is quite energetic and catchy.

 

The second half of the program has Mösching improvising over a drone stated by his synth on “Strict Dancer,” an infectious jam with bassist Jeremiah Hunt and drummer Reuben Gingrich (“Winnemac”), the bluesy “Indigenous,” an atmospheric “Melanie,” the mysterious mood of “Better Than Me,” and “The Belief In Magic” which has the guitarist really going for it during a rocking performance that perfectly wraps up his release.

Samuel Mösching was born and raised in Switzerland where he began playing guitar when he was ten, began writing music two years later, and at 13 started doubling on electric bass and drums. While he had begun playing jazz when he was 12, after he heard John Coltrane’s Crescent album three years later, Mösching really turned his main focus towards jazz. While he studied classical music, jazz and composition in school, he became an important part of the European jazz scene, recording several live albums with the group Sonic Fusion and releasing Punta Cana with his trio Aido. In 2013 he moved to Chicago.

 

Since then Samuel Mösching has worked with a wide assortment of artists (including drummer Rusty Jones, Ed Wilkerson, John Stowell, Zeshan B, Mars Williams, Indian folk singer Subhi, Wanees Zarour’s The East Loop, and Reuben Gingrich’s Blue Island), performed in the Chicago area, New York City, Washington DC and Europe, and led three albums (Up, Some Other Tree, and Room 3) prior to Ethereal Kinks. 

 

The release of Ethereal Kinks, arguably his finest recording thus far, should result in Samuel Mösching gaining much more recognition as a very original jazz guitarist and composer, one whose music has the potential to reach a very wide audience.

1. No Dancing feat. Renda “Victoria” Jackson 02:59 

2. Beauty And The Beast Roleplay 03:33 

3. Disconnect 05:27 

4. Mental Illness 04:09 

5. Modesta feat. Juan Pastor 04:06 

6. Strict Dancer 01:27 

7. Winnemac feat. Jeremiah Hunt & Reuben Gingrich 03:15 

8. Indigenous 04:28 

9. Melanie 02:06 

10. Better Than Me 02:01 

11. The Belief In Magic 03:42

All compositions by Samuel Mösching (SUISA)

Samuel Mösching - Guitars, Basses, Drums and Synths, except on:

“No Dancing”: Renda “Victoria” Jackson - Bass 

“Modesta”: Juan Pastor - Drums

“Winnemac”: Jeremiah Hunt - Bass, Reuben Gingrich - Drums 

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OUT FRIDAY: Greg Ward, Sharel Cassity, & Rajiv Halim - ALTOIZM via AFAR Music

Greg Ward, Rajiv Halim, and Sharel Cassity Are Altoizm

New Self-Titled Album out July 16, 2021 via AFAR Music

AFAR Music is proud to announce the July 16, 2021 release of Altoizm, the self-titled debut recording from a three-headed alto saxophone supergroup led by Greg Ward, Rajiv Halim, and Sharel Cassity. 

Featuring a rocksteady yet explosive rhythm section of Richard D. Johnson (piano), Jeremiah Hunt (bass), and Michael Piolet (drums), Altoizm is seven tracks and 42 minutes of original jazz. Ward, Cassity, and Johnson have each written two tunes, and Halim adds “Bembe’s Kids,” a melodically complex tune that’s perhaps the first to simultaneously honor both the bembé rhythms native to sub-Saharan West Africa and the madcap animated comedy Bébé’s Kids, a symbolic nod, Halim says, to “the chaotic social, economic, and political environment in which Black American music has been— and continues to be—developed.”

Musically, it’s a bluesy, noirish tune that sees that chaos and raises it a mischievous grin, while getting the absolute most out of three saxophones playing both in unison and in harmony.

It takes great individual talent but also real chemistry as a unit to pull off the kinds of sophisticated arrangements presented here. Even though these three saxophonists are used to being featured soloists and, collectively, have released about a dozen albums as leaders, their chemistry with each other is palpable. Far from being able to discern any ego, what shines through most prominently is the collective desire to produce purposeful and meaningful compositions. 

Maybe it’s a Chicago thing. 

All three—Ward, Halim, and Cassity—are stalwart stewards of the Second City’s jazz scene. Ward, a prolific instrumentalist and composer, counts pioneering free jazz saxophonist Fred Anderson as a mentor and Chicago rapper Lupe Fiasco as a colleague. There are few compositional commissions for which he’s not qualified. He’s composed classical music and jazz, scores for ballet and film, and concerti for symphony orchestra and chamber ensembles, as well as tunes for his own bands, Fitted Shards and Phonic Juggernaut. His 2010 debut with the former, South Side Story, was named Recording of the Year by the Chicago Tribune, and he’s presently a member of the jazz studies faculty at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music.

Halim, like Ward, has collaborated regularly with the Jazz Institute of Chicago, and, like Ward, possesses a boundless musicality. As a young saxophonist, he found a mentor in iconic Chicago tenorman Von Freeman, frequently sitting in at Freeman’s long running jazz jam at the South Side’s New Apartment Lounge. And not far removed from his high school graduation, he played Lollapalooza as a member of the hip-hop-fueled sonic cauldron that was Kids These Days. From that association, he befriended Chance the Rapper, appearing on the latter’s 2017 Grammy-winner Coloring Book.

Sharel Cassity, Greg Ward, and Rajiv Halim courtesy of AFAR Music Group

A similar thing happened when Halim found himself in the same recording studio as Cassity. The DIVA Jazz Orchestra’s lead alto saxophonist from ’07 to ’14, Cassity has released four albums as a leader (most recently 2018’s Evolve), has played in bands led by Cyrus Chestnut, Nicholas Payton, and the late Jimmy Heath, and has shared stages with Christian McBride, Wynton Marsalis, Dee Dee Bridgwater, and too many other jazz immortals to properly note here. She and Ward had met touring together a decade prior in New York, but she’d never played with Halim.  Each in the studio working on individual projects, Cassity and Halim got to talking—then soon got to jamming. Feeling instant chemistry, Cassity suggested “an alto summit.” Halim quickly agreed, but they needed one more. It had to be Ward. 

Wise choice. Ward understood instinctively how to get the best out of these three altos, both individually and collectively. Case in point is his first composition here, “The Mighty Mayfly of Truth,” which explodes warmly and gradually like the break of a bluebird day, with brilliant three-part section playing that shines warm on your face and solos that melt it.  

“I thought about each saxophonist and tried to imagine how our sounds would come together,” said Ward. “And then, ‘The Mighty Mayfly of Truth’ almost jumped out of me.”

Next, Cassity’s “Thoroughbred,” introduces an original melody of the highest pedigree over the chord changes to Benny Golson’s “Stablemates,” raising the stakes down the stretch with an eight-bar tag reminiscent of the late Jimmy Heath’s elegant codas. 

Not only can she end a tune with grace and style, Cassity can also open an album with authority; allow “Cedar Groove” to testify. Composing atop the chord changes to Cedar Walton’s “Fantasy in D,” Cassity has constructed a theatrical yet muscly tribute to the late Jazz Messenger, with a couple of rejuvenating micro-cations to Latin America woven into the tune’s hard-swinging and eminently hummable main theme. 

Alto summits bringing together three saxophonists of this caliber are rare. Factor in the quality of the rhythm section—see Johnson’s “Last Minute,” the album’s closer, for masterclasses from both Piolet and Hunt and Ward’s “John Cotton” for bluesy improvisational pianism at its breeziest from Johnson—and you can forget about it.

Cassity knew when she caught Halim in that studio that they couldn’t let the pitch go by. “This opportunity” she said, “has allowed us to work together in a way we never would have been able to otherwise.” 

1. Cedar Groove (4:53) - Cassity

2. Bembe’s Kids (5:36) - Halim

3. The Mighty Mayfly of Truth (6:25) - Ward

4. Thoroughbred (6:46) - Cassity

5. The Time Has Come (5:16) - Johnson

6. John Cotton (6:50) - Ward

7. Last Minute (6:02) - Johnson

Rajiv Halim, Sharel Cassity, Greg Ward - Alto Saxophone

Richard Johnson - Piano

Jeremiah Hunt - Bass

Michael Piolet - Drums

AFAR Music

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EVENT

Date and time

Thu, July 29, 2021

8:00 PM – 9:30 PM CDT

Location

Jazz Showcase

806 South Plymouth Ct

Chicago, IL 60605

United States

Isaiah Collier & The Chosen Few - Cosmic Transitions (May 12, 2021 Division 81 Records)

Transformation is the constant that unfolds infinitely. Those moments when future becomes the past, and the past becomes the present. Cosmic Transitions navigates the challenges and changes of existence leading up to 2020 and beyond.

It is best for anyone who really seeks to take a journey to know that all the steps in between shape the arrival. Isaiah Collier and The Chosen Few etched together an occurrence in this recorded performance of a five-part Suite composed by Collier. To compress all the understanding, lessons, love, and humility into writing would surely be taking the breath from the poetic moment that occurred on September 23rd, 2020. These artists and more importantly, these souls took a journey with the intention of pushing beyond the limitations of the world, critics, and perhaps even their own expectations.

This performance takes place at Van Gelder Studio’s on John Coltrane’s birthday, in the very room where he and so many other compassionate artists pushed beyond what was known and created a new wave in sound. So many steps were taken to achieve this moment of boundless reaching. Music is the Universal Language. The unifying force that bends reality around its subjects, as it services as an instrument of unity. Beyond wherever it is that society is, it is music and love the saves the day. 

Each musician on this recording takes hold of this composition and threads their own path to the purpose of this work of art. That purpose is like most forms of art left to an audience for interpretation to examine their place in life and hopefully feel a connection to something more than the here and now. Cosmic Transition begins in invocation with frequency’s resonating in the same room where so many had stood with hopes and intentions that their art and purpose service a greater understanding.

This Quartet performance finds each musician pushing and exploring the sonics of their individual instruments to expand as one wave, one journey. I implore anyone daring enough to take this journey, that you listen to this experience in its entirety.

Every dimension of the room both on the physical and spiritual plane made this moment possible. Do you hear those few seconds when John walked into the room? Beyond any space and time, beyond the common understanding of life and death, beyond a type of music or crowd, Cosmic Transitions is a doorway for all. For all those who came before and after gratitude for your ear and hopefully your heart. As’e! -Ausar Ra

1. Invocation/Part I. Forgiveness

2. Part II. Humility

3. Part III. Understanding/Part IV. Truth and Guidance

4. Part V. Mercury's Retrograde video

5. Cosmic Transitions

Composed, Written, and Arranged by Isaiah Collier

Soprano and Tenor Sax: Isaiah Collier

Drums: Michael Shekwoaga Ode

Upright Bass: Jeremiah Hunt

Piano: Mike King

Produced By Sonny Daze

Mixed and Mastered by Sean Owens

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