Being Playing is a musical landscape that organically unfolds as a meditative story. The form is abstract and closer to the way of a modern classical composer than of straight ahead jazz.
This recording is a personal milestone for each of the musicians and opens up a new musical chapter in their musical odyssey.
The musicians come from different musical backgrounds, but do nevertheless have a clear mutual idea of how music has it’s own strong inner life, without the appearance of the musicians ego.
Mark Dresser is a legend in American improvised music and groundbreaking on the double bass, which he has given an entirely new voice. After many years of living in New York playing with Anthony Braxton, Tim Berne, Ray Andersson and John Zorn, he is now a professor at San Diego University where he met Butch Lacy 35 years ago.
Butch played at the time with Sarah Vaughan’s trio but shortly after he moved to Denmark where he has been living since. He has transformed the Danish jazz environment in many ways with his playing, as well as his charismatic teaching at conservatories all over the country. Butch Lacy has composed for both symphony orchestra and big band, and his Very Big Band. A combination of both was an important musical experiment in Denmark.
Jesper Løvdal is too young to have been taught by Butch Lacy in Copenhagen, but he was highly fascinated by his spiritual playing from a young age and has been playing duo with him for 10 years. When Mark Dresser, Butch Lacy and Jesper Løvdal met for a concert in Copenhagen where magic occurred from the first sound, it was a necessity to go into the studio and bring the young drummer that originally brought Butch and Jesper together, Kresten Osgood. Osgood has his roots in jazz but plays with an universal artistic expression which lives very much in the present moment, and melts together with the rest of the band.
Butch Lacy: piano
Jesper Løvdal: alto flute, tenor saxophone, contrabass clarinet
Mark Dresser: bass
Kresten Osgood: drums
Wizard of Os
Lacy Dresser
Being
Playing
BUY THIS ALBUM
