Buffalo New York native John Hasselback III is quickly establishing himself as a lyrical trumpet soloist and composer in New York City’s vibrant jazz scene. Hasselback’s colorful sound is thoroughly informed by the lineage of jazz trumpet tradition, combining the sounds of yesterday with the sounds of tomorrow.
This music was written while living in Hartford, Connecticut and New York City. It reflects my experiences, surroundings and inspirations. I hope the listener finds their own sense of meaning and joy from the music.
1. B.F.G. 03:42
2. Blood Orange 05:21
3. Robert's Run 06:59
4. Scarborough Street 05:26
5. Rene's Way 06:36 6. Third Time's the Charm 03:43
7. Body and Soul 05:41
8. Eclipse 04:42
9. Kingsbridge 05:11
All compositions by John Hasselback III | John Hasselback III Music (ASCAP) except Body and Soul by Johnny Green | Warner Bros. (renewed)
John Hasselback III - Trumpet
Wayne Escoffery - Saxophone
Steve Davis - Trombone
Jonathan Barber - Drums
Luques Curtis - Bass
Taber Gable - Piano
Recorded at GHR October 10th & 11th, 2020
Andrew Oedel - Recording Engineer
Ethan Weissman - Mixing Engineer
Carl Bespolka - Additional Mixing and Mastering Engineer
John Hasselback III - Producer
Jack Nosavage - Production Assistant
Zack Rubin - Cover Photo
This project is funded in part by the Pathways To Jazz grant, a donor advised fund of the Boulder County Arts Alliance.
Artist-focused non-profit Giant Step Arts partners with Jazz Generation's KEYED UP! for new edition of acclaimed concert series Walk With The Wind
Free performances beginning April 4 in Central Park honor legacy of congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis
Featuring Wayne Escoffery/Jeremy Pelt Quartet, William Parker Trio, James Brandon Lewis Freed Style Free Trio, Melissa Aldana Trio, Chris Potter Trio, Antonio Sanchez Trio, Marquis Hill Quartet, Michael Thomas Quartet, Nasheet Waits, Mark Turner, Marika Hughes, and Immanuel Wilkins
"Sitting socially distanced on The Mall and listening to live jazz feels like an optimistic moment...Jimmy Katz and Giant Step Arts are plugging a gap with Walk With The Wind."- Dan Bergsagel, London Jazz News
Giant Step Arts in partnership with Jazz Generation’s KEYED UP! continues the acclaimed performance series Walk With The Wind honoring civil rights activist and congressman John Lewis. The concerts – curated by Jimmy Katz and Nasheet Waits – will take place at pop up locations in New York City’s Central Park.
Shows run from 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. and feature at least two bands. They will be rescheduled in case of inclement weather.
CONCERT SCHEDULE
• Sunday, April 4 – Note new location at The South End of the Mall
11 a.m. – Alto saxophonist Sarah Hanahan, trumpeter Giveton Gelin, bassist Phil Norris, and drummer Robert Lotreck
1 p.m. – The Wayne Escoffery/Jeremy Pelt Quartet with Dezron Douglas and Johnathan Blake
• Saturday, April 10
11 a.m. – Alto saxophonist Sarah Hanahan, bassist Phil Norris, and drummer Robert Lotreck
1 p.m. – William Parker Trio with Cooper Moore and Hamid Drake
• Sunday, April 11
11 a.m. – Alto saxophonist Sarah Hanahan, bassist Phil Norris, and drummer Robert Lotreck
1 p.m. – Melissa Aldana Trio with Pablo Menares and Kush Abadey
• Saturday, April 17 – Chris Potter Trio with Joe Martin and Nasheet Waits
• Sunday, April 18 – Antonio Sanchez Trio with Donny McCaslin and Matt Brewer
• Saturday, April 24 – Marquis Hill Quartet
• Sunday, April 25 – Michael Thomas Quartet with Michael Rodriguez, Edward Perez and Johnathan Blake
• Saturday, May 1 – James Brandon Lewis, Freed Style Free Trio with Rashaan Carter and Chad Taylor; Aaron Burnett Quartet with Peter Evans, Nick Jozwiak, and Tyshawn Sorey
• Saturday, May 8 – Marika Hughes: The New String Quartet with Hughes, Charlie Burnham, Marvin Sewell, and Rashaan Carter
Other upcoming dates will include bands led by Nasheet Waits, Mark Turner, and Immanuel Wilkins.
“The pandemic has been disastrous for musicians, many of whom normally earn a living through live performances and tours,” says Katz. “We wanted to find a way to continue supporting musicians, bring them together with audiences safely, and enable them to have a payday! Walk with the Wind, honoring the legacy of the great American John Lewis, is one way we are accomplishing this, and the response has been tremendous.”
The well-received series, which began August 28, 2020 with Wayne Escoffery’s trio, has also featured The Marquis Hill Quartet, the Michael Thomas Trio, Marcus Strickland Trio, the Eric McPherson Trio, the Leap Day Trio and the Joel Ross Quartet.
Founded by renowned photographers Jimmy and Dena Katz in January 2018, Giant Step Arts is an innovative, artist-focused non-profit organization dedicated to commissioning and showcasing the work of innovative modern jazz artists. Giant Step Arts offers musicians the artistic and financial resources to create bold, adventurous new music free of commercial pressure. Giant Step Arts provides promotional material and publicity services, presents premiere performances and compensates artists, records performances for independent release, provides artists with CDs and digital downloads to sell directly, conveys complete ownership of masters to artists, and provides PR support for the recordings. “Giant Step Arts does not sell any music,” Katz says. “Our goals are to help musicians make bold artistic statements and to advance their careers.”
Jazz Generation was founded in 1999 to emphasize the importance of live jazz as an art form and the performing arts as a cultural asset. The Jazz Discovery Program (JDP) and The Jazz Standard Youth Orchestra (JSYO), and since 2014 KEYED UP!, an anti-poverty program, has offered services that support professional jazz artists in their performing careers, revitalize local businesses, and develop a new generation of audiences and performers. KEYED UP! Has quickly become a favorite NYC entity for musicians, audiences, and venues. Operating simultaneously in over 25 partner venues spanning from Jersey City to Boston, KeyedUP! Is proud to keep hundreds of musicians working and thousands of jazz listeners happy at no extra cost to partner venues.
The Black Art Jazz Collective's mission statement celebrates African-American cultural and political icons. At the core is a modernism that conjures up the classic bands of Art Blakey and acoustic Miles Davis. But with the contemporary soul-fuelled solos and locked-in rhythm the band is more likely to launch into a counterpoint riff or the spacious funk of hip-hop than the svelte lines of a classic walking bass. The Black Art Jazz Collective delivers strong original tunes and purposeful, form-hugging improvisation that keeps things looking forward rather than back. And with trumpeter Jeremy Pelt on ebullient form, and saxophonist Wayne Escoffery's muscularity contrasting with the tenderness of James Burton III's trombone, the focus never becomes diffuse or wavers.
Wayne Escoffery reaching his 40th birthday marked a period of big changes for the award-winning saxophonist both artistically and in his personal life. Escoffery had reached a crossroads. He had spent a happy and successful decade in the band of trumpeter/composer Tom Harrell but felt that it was time for him to step out more as a leader. At the end of 2016, Escoffery assembled a tremendous quartet of jazz’s most elite musicians that would record a live album, headline New York’s legendary Village Vanguard, and tour steadily for the next year. The current political and cultural landscape of the United States has caused many to take pause and Escoffery has had a lifetime to learn and deal with growing up black and as an immigrant (English born of Jamaican descent). But it was the recent US election and its effects on his young son that had a profound impact on him. Escoffery’s evocative new recording, Vortex, is about the current dizzying maelstrom of racism, bigotry and hate in the U.S. and the saxophonist’s renewed commitment to his responsibilities and artistic goals. As a youth in the southern United States, and as a young adult in Connecticut, Escoffery experienced first hand the entire prismatic spectrum of racism. From being too black to not being black enough, he had to be strong and determined to push past the negativity to succeed in the fields he pursued, namely being a professional musician and educator, most recently being appointed “Lecturer in Jazz Improvisation” at the prestigious Yale School of Music.
The 2016 Presidential election left Escoffery perplexed and despondent, as it did a large portion of the nation, but it was the response of his young son that he found most distressing. Escoffery’s eight year-old son was born into a period of hope, dignity and pride through the Obama presidency. It was the aftermath of the Freddie Gray shooting and the upheaval of racism and hate after the election that had his son frightened as though the end of the world was approaching. Escoffery knew his role as a father would become increasingly crucial in educating a boy in how to become a young man in the turbulent US racial environment. On his new recording, Escoffery presents this great quartet on a number of original pieces, a standard and an original piece by the ensemble’s brilliant drummer, Ralph Peterson, who Escoffery has worked alongside since Escoffery’s arrival in New York in 2000. The rest of the band is equally pedigreed. Pianist David Kikoski has been a regular collaborator in the Mingus Big Band and with Eddie Henderson, and bassist Ugonna Okegwo has been driving the rhythm section of Tom Harrell’s ensemble for the entirety of Escoffery’s tenure. Escoffery’s quartet is augmented by the percussion of Jaquelene Acevedo on a number of pieces. The recording begins with the leader’s “Vortex,” an intense composition characterizing the environmental pull of racism and hate that he guides his son away from. The plaintive “Judgement” is an improvised introduction to Peterson’s “Acceptance,” a challenging piece written in 15/4 that really highlights the ensemble’s interconnectivity and drive, its title stemming from “The Serenity Prayer” written by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
Tom Harrell’s penchant for constant writing amazes Escoffery who regularly falls in love with the trumpeter’s compositions. Escoffery rehearsed and played Harrell’s “February” with him only once before the piece was shelved. The saxophonist revives the tune named for his birth month here. Escoffery’s “The Devil’s Den” is an ominous and darkly atmospheric piece evocative of Donald Trump, his entourage and the world they seem intent to create, powered here by the fantastic young drummer, Kush Abadey.
The wistful “Tears for Carolyn” echoes a mood of both melancholy and perseverance after the unfortunate end of a long relationship. Escoffery learned the Noel and Joe Sherman standard “To The Ends of the Earth” from pianist Monty Alexander. He fell in love with the piece and re-imagined the Nat King Cole favorite in an arrangement reminiscent of the John Coltrane Quartet. Escoffery’s “In His Eyes” is about taking in the world as a child would, specifically the way his son has interpreted the events of the past year, with dramatic turns by guests: trumpeter Jeremy Pelt and drummer Abadey. The recording concludes with the saxophonist’s “Baku,” an uptempo piece that reflects a hectic 48-hour period where he had to switch from one gig to another, which required him to visit the Azarbaijani Embassy and get to Baku for a performance with pianist/composer Amina Figarova.
On his moving new Vortex, Wayne Escoffery uses his music to come to terms with what he confronted as a man of color growing up in the US, how to help his son navigate through the current environment of bigotry and hate, and how to harness his emotions to generate positive momentum in his life and career.
Guitarist and composer Avi Rothbard is one of New York’s prominent jazz guitarists and a jazz clinician.
Born and raised in Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, Israel, Avi Rothbard has moved to Boston Mass in the summer of 1995, after receiving a scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music. During his Berklee years, Mr. Rothbard has received The Jimmy Hendrix Award, Boston Jazz Society Award, Guitar Dpt. Achievement Award and The William Leavitt Award. Mr. Rothbard holds a Masters degree in jazz studies from the City College of New York and is also a 2013 recipient of the Bronx Council on The Arts award(BRIO) in the instrumental music category.
A prolific composer, Rothbard’s compositions are featured in several recordings of his peers. In 2014 , Avi Rothbard has won the John Lennon Award for the jazz category.
Since residing in New York City in 1999, Avi Rothbard has led and co-led ensembles in some of the major jazz venues around the world. Mr. Rothbard has worked with jazz veterans, as well as the new generation of jazz masters such as Ben Riley, Jeremy Pelt, Freddy Cole, Wayne Escoffery, Gregory Porter, Ray Drummond, Alex Blake, Mike Clark and Jay Leonhart, to name just a few.
Avi Rothbard’s name is included in Scott Yanow’s book: “The Great Jazz Guitarists: The Ultimate Guide”
"Young Lions" is a term that jazz journalists have been using to describe the long list of straight-ahead, acoustic-oriented jazz improvisers who were born in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, and London native Wayne Escoffery is among the many Young Lions who started building his catalog in the early 2000s. Escoffery, who plays post-bop and hard bop, is a tenor saxophonist with a big, full tone; his influences on the tenor have included, among others, John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Dexter Gordon, Joe Henderson, and Sonny Rollins. Escoffery plays the soprano sax as a second instrument, and his most obvious inspirations on the soprano include Coltrane and Shorter. But whether he is on the tenor or the soprano, Escoffery has maintained a decidedly straight-ahead perspective that is quite faithful to the spirit of the Young Lion movement. Notes by Alex Henderson
1. Sweet Blue (feat. Wayne Escoffery) 6:15
2. How Long Has This Been Going On? 4:03
3. Let's Call This (feat. Wayne Escoffery) 5:50
4. The Shadow of Your Smile 5:27
5. Satellite (feat. Wayne Escoffery) 5:42
6. Confessin' (feat. Wayne Escoffery) 6:50
7. Alone Together 5:00
8. Old Devil Moon (feat. Wayne Escoffery) 4:19
9. Ugly Beauty (feat. Wayne Escoffery) 4:45
10. What Is This Thing Called Love? 3:27
11. Inutil Paisagem 4:44
12. The End of a Love Affair (feat. Wayne Escoffery) 5:37
