Monday, February 28, 2022

Marcos Pin Brass Quintet - PORTRAIT OF A DECADE (Part ONE): The Photographer (February 28, 2022)

Portrait Of A Decade is a concert composition for traditional brass quintet and Jazz guitar.

The music is inspired by a Rafa Pasadas´ photography book, "Mercado".

The concert is built in three parts. Here you´ll enjoy tthe first one suite entitled "The Photographer".

1. Vision 06:55
2. Intuition 06:21
3. Soul 05:18

Marcos Pin - Guitar
Javier Pereiro "GDJazz" - Trumpet & flugelhorn
Fernando Rei - Trumpet & flugelhorn
Álvaro Crego - French horn
Ginés Guerra - Trombone
Rafael de la Torre - Tuba

Mixed & mastered by Cristina Morquillas
Cover art by Donna A. McClay

Music composed & arranged by Malcolm Stilton

Local Talent, Projectwhatever - REMOTISM (February 2022)

Local Talent combines 3 of Canada’s most eminent instrumentalists performing together for the first time on record in this exciting new experimental jazz project. The group is lead by producer and keyboardist Projectwhatever (aka James Hill), a rising star of the Toronto scene, known best for his work with international jazz and hip hop sensation BADBADNOTGOOD.

1. HOME 100 01:37
2. SMOKE AND PRAY 03:44
3. GREENPOINT 04:29
4. SAKAMOTO 04:22
5. REMOTISM 05:10
6. THE DEVIL MAY CRY 04:08
7. SPIRITS (feat. Autobahn Trio) 02:47
8. CONTROL CENTER (feat. Autobahn Trio) 03:18

Projectwhatever on piano & keyboards
Rich Brown on electric bass
Ian Wright on drums and percussion

Compositions by Projectwhatever
*tracks 7 & 8 co-written by Ian Wright and Jeff LaRochelle
Editing, mixing, mastering by Projectwhatever
Produced by Projectwhatever
Cover art by Klara Vanzella Yang
Engineered by Stephen Koszler
Recorded at Revolution Recording

Threedom - Conduits (February 2022)

During the summer of 2021 we managed to get two live performances in, including our first public ticketed show which occurred at the legendary Horning’s Hideout in White Plains Oregon. The venerable Northwest String Summit wasn’t able to hold their annual gathering but figured out how to put on a special event called the ‘Peacock Pickin Party’ in early July and we were tapped to open up the night for Yonder Mountain String Band and the Infamous Stringdusters.

Then a few months later in September we travelled down to Navarro California deep in the Redwoods for our first ever out-of-town performance, at the lovely Camp Deep End festival. Joined for a jam by our friend Chris Haugen on lap steel, we played under a tarp while being pummeled with torrential rains as joyous festival-goers danced and cavorted in the mud and it was perfect.

1. Security Please 06:34
2. In The Deep End 04:55
3. Redwood Downpour 03:52
4. Peacock Way 04:08
5. Daydream Sunset 03:47
6. Navarro Tracers 04:03
7. What Was That? 05:29
8. Just As I Remembered 03:30
9. Strength Summit 04:08

Asher Fulero: Keyboards
Brett McConnell: Bass
Matt Butler: Drums

Chris Haugen: Lap Steel (6)

1,2,3,6 recorded live September 18, 2021
at Camp Deep End Festival, Navarro CA
Live Mix/Multitrack Recording by Todd Kushnir

4,5,7,8,9 recorded live July 20, 2021
at Northwest String Summit’s Peacock Pickin’ Party
Horning’s Hideout, White Plains OR
Live Mix/Multitrack Recording by Alan Mekel

Editing, Mixing, Mastering by Asher Fulero
Artwork by Todd Kushnir and Asher Fulero

Brett Walberg - Walberg Tractor Co. (February 2022)

Over the past few years, I have spent a lot of time thinking about my childhood in rural Massachusetts and how it has affected my approach to work, art and music.

So many seminal moments of my young life were framed by working out in the yard with my Father, doing many of the chores that I composed tunes about. That and the trusty tractor that we had to do everything we need to do.

I hope this record conveys the history and storytelling from my childhood that was only possible with such a spectacular band of dear, trusted friends.

1. Fish Pond/Pond Fish 05:03
2. Pulling Stumps 11:57
3. Showing Off 08:24
4. Wheelhorse 12:10
5. Cutting Trees 09:30
6. Letter to Judy Bailey 11:34

Brett Walberg - Saxophone/Flute/Bass Clarinet
James Heazelwood-Dale - Bass
Tyson Jackson - Drums

Recording Engineer - Sam Gossner
Mixing/Mastering - Gordon Neidinger
Album Art - Ken Calhoun

Tim Stevens - The beauty of the way and the goodness of the wayfarers (February 2022)

With profoundest love, respect, admiration and gratitude,
this is for Tabitha Halley

‘The less we say about it the better; make it up as we go along,’ – David Byrne, ‘This must be the place (Naïve melody)’

'Think where man's glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends.'
– W. B. Yeats

This is my seventh solo piano album, and they’re fun to make. If you’ve been following, you may have noticed that I move from studio to studio to give each one a slightly different feel and sound; although all three of the church ones were recorded at Pughouse for consistency within a series, the others have been done at various places in Sydney and Melbourne.

Most of the pieces on this album come from that very fruitful year of 2016, although some selections are much older. The daily composition effort in the leap year was, and remains, the only time in my life when I have kept a new year’s resolution, and it showed me some valuable things. Not all the compositions were worth playing again, but the best of them I like, and I wish to preserve. There are also a couple of free improvisations, just to keep things fresh. Making it up as we go along. And (wait, no?!) a standard.

This is a digital-only release, because CDs are expensive to manufacture and people have stopped buying them like they used to and they take up space at home. I’m interested to see how things go with this, so it’s a learning experience. If you want to burn your own CD, obviously you can, if you’ve bought the music.

Composition is a thing that has interested me since childhood; I wrote some dreadful music that was performed when I was in primary school and I’m very pleased to think that it’s been forgotten. But when I started studying improvisation I took leads from people who had written the material they played and that seemed like something for which to aim. Writing the book, as the saying goes, was very attractive to me so when I was a member of Browne – Haywood – Stevens my objective was to make the larger part of the band’s repertoire original. I was lucky to have friends like Al and Nick to deal with what I delivered, and they did so with graciousness and interest that was deeply rewarding.
Some pieces, like 'The Unmistaken', take ages to write because you're a bit young and you've got hold of something that you really want to use but can't quite handle. Yet. Others are a matter of an hour or two, and because you've practised you can see more clearly the possibilities of an idea and the way in which to get from here to there. The effort is always to make something serviceable enough to warrant repeated performance, something that feels extendable, that doesn't suck.

This music is, as I say, for Tabitha, whose company I have enjoyed for over thirty years. Sometimes you meet someone and it feels a bit like you never didn’t know them. Tab and I met in the last years of high school. She is my closest friend in the world after my wife and our kids, and I thank God for her. Mr Byrne more or less nails our relationship.

Now. Thanks are due to some very dear friends. My beloved trio and double trio colleagues: Madeleine Jevons, Phoebe Green, Naomi Wileman, Ben Robertson, Marty Holoubek, Tony Floyd, and Dave Beck. You’re all so ridiculously special, and I love you all like mad. To Myles, my gratitude for a wonderful session. Respect and thanks. To my darling Luci, my honoured thanks for the beautiful paperwork, and to Cheryl Orsini, most serious thanks for making the cover look so fine. Fond thanks to my radio supporters: David Moyle, Andrew Ford, Mal Stanley, and Jessica Nicholas. And everyone else, nation-wide, who broadcast bits of 'There’ll be some changes played'. Dear pals who keep me going: Meg Morley, Alison Lemoh, Mth Mel Clark, Mth Colleen Clayton, Fr John Baldock, Fr Hugh Kempster, Jennifer Mills, Dr Penelope Preston, Gary Warne, Patrick Jaffe, Sophie Allen, Tony Gould, Andrew Ogburn, and Leah Scholes. Blessings on the lot of you; I need you because you're all so important to me. To Tab, the dedicatee, all the stuff I’ve said up top. You’re a totally marvellous friend and a sustaining good influence and I’m so very glad we met. I love you, although you could be in no doubt about that by now. And to my exquisite family, the peerless Sally James, and Oliver, Frederick and Lucinda, my heart, as ever. I am so grateful for your company and your support and your enthusiastic love. You are supreme. 

1. Well, I mostly hide 05:53
2. Try it on 03:44
3. Sweet silent thought 03:10
4. Cocktails before noon 04:13
5. The vault 05:08
6. Yours and mine 02:45
7. This quiet life 03:49
8. Inkling 04:18
9. The new ships 04:03
10. Into cleanness leaping 05:31
11. The unmistaken 04:36
12. How long has this been going on? 07:22

All compositions and improvisations by Tim Stevens, except 'How long has this been going on?' by George and Ira Gershwin (thanks, boys)

Tim Stevens, piano

Produced by Tim Stevens

Recorded by Myles Mumford at Rolling Stock Recording Rooms on 3 February 2022
Edited, mixed and mastered also by Myles, the champ
Executive producer Tim Stevens
Cover by Luci James and Cheryl Orsini

Charles Goold - Rhythm In Contrast (February 2022)

Charles Goold, is one of New York City's hardest working jazz drummers of his generation.

Goold has performed with a wide variety of acts across varying styles from Wynton Marsalis & JALC, to rap icons Cam’Ron, Talib Kweli, and Ghostface Killah.

Goold uses these experiences to propel the sound of his group NuBopCity, a blend of Hard Bop, Hip Hop, Funk and Afro-Carribean influences.

1. Sequence of Events 05:33
2. Nedistic 06:06
3. Tell Me Something When 04:51
4. Love Is A Many Splendored Thing 03:04
5. Caribbean Fire Dance 04:57
6. Lo's Lament 04:21
7. Head Start 04:45
8. Gettin' Out Blues 05:09
9. Pati's Mood 06:58
10. Resisting Arrest 05:32

Steve Nelson - Vibes
Ned Goold - Sax
Andrew Renfroe - Guitar
Taber Gable - Piano
Noah Jackson - Bass
Charles Goold - Drums

Elio Villafranca - Producer

Michael Garrick Trio & Sextet - Farnborough Technical College 1965 (February 2022 British Progressive Jazz)

Recorded live at Farnborough Technical College on 23rd October 1965.
From the private collection of Roger Palmer. Previously unheard. Monophonic sound.

'I was an apprentice at RAE Farnborough from 1962-7 and discovered all the things I really wanted to do - music (I'd started playing bass), photography, archaeology - and one of the things that helped the music side were the weekly gigs that Michael organised at The Highwayman where I and a couple of other jazz lovers were regulars. I'd give a lot to be able to revisit those gigs - Michael's trio, trio plus guest (including Joe several times and sometimes with Shake, Ronnie Ross, Don Lamont, etc), Tubby, the early years of Rendell-Carr quintet (or not so early if Michael was on piano). The New Jazz Orchestra squeezed in a few times with some huge sounds and there were other treats, Dudley Moore trio, Johnny Scott quartet, and many I will have forgotten...

An offshoot of my music interest was that I and another apprentice, Derek Wickham, formed a 'music society' at the tech which enabled us to buy the Ferrograph that was used to record Michael's concert and rent records that we could play to members of the society. I did the jazz, Derek did classical - alternate weeks. Derek was also one of the Highwayman crowd and I guess that we hatched up the idea of the concert and asked Michael for a price.

I remember driving to Michael's house late in the morning and everyone was crowded into a room in his house rehearsing. Michael had agreed that we could record it - all from a single mic if I remember correctly... The hall would have been just that - a basic college hall in the 1960s with a stage and not much else. It certainly was not good enough for the annual review that we apprentices put on and used a 'theatre' known as the 'RAE Assembly Hall' (or 'rooms') which even had a couple of lights. I was in the wings on the same side as Coleridge (Goode) where I guess we had the tape recorder too... To an extent, these were musicians we knew slightly from the Highwayman, but I had the opportunity to chat a little with Coleridge...'

Roger Palmer - February 2022 

1. Leprechaun Leap 09:57
2. Promises 06:52
3. Song By The Sea 05:14
4. Parting Is Such 06:50 video
5. Childe Rolande 06:21
6. Requiem 05:07
7. Portrait Of A Young Lady 14:21
8. I Got Rhythm 04:46
9. Webster's Mood 14:15
10. Second Coming 09:25

Michael Garrick - piano
Joe Harriott - alto sax
Tony Coe - tenor sax
Ian Carr - trumpet
Coleridge Goode - bass
Colin Barnes - drums

All tracks composed by Michael Garrick ℗ 1965 except:
8 Gershwin/Gershwin ℗ 1930

Original recording - Roger Palmer
Consultation - Gabriel Garrick
Restored and produced by Matt Parker for British Progressive Jazz

Patrick Shiroishi & Jeff Tobias (February 2022)

“They're two distinct types of visionaries, it's like fire and ice, basically…” - Spinal Tap

In May 2021, Jeff Tobias traveled to Los Angeles to see friends and get into nature. While there, he met up with Patrick Shiroishi for a first meeting improvisation that saw both multi-instrumentalists exclusively playing sopranino saxophone, the high-pitched instrument made famous by Maurice Ravel’s Boléro.

Nick Tuttle engineered the session, with assistance from Jerry Chinatown. In order to accentuate the registral extremes offered by the paired sopraninos, Tuttle recorded Shiroishi and Tobias in both the largest and smallest spaces available in his studio. The recording was consequently mastered by Ian Wayne; the results speak for themselves. The pair intend to record a follow-up sometime in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-two.

1. A1 10:45
2. A2 04:38
3. B1 16:20

Patrick Shiroishi: sopranino saxophone
Jeff Tobias: sopranino saxophone

Recorded on May 24th 2021 in Los Angeles
Tracked and mixed by Nick Tuttle
Mastered by Ian Wayne

Hello Cacus! - Happy Thief (February 2022 ears&eyes Records)

During a residency in New York, September 2018, Argentinian drummer Federico Isasti and Norwegian bassist Petter Asbjørnsen met and developed a spontaneous musical connection. As part of the SIM workshop (led by Ralph Alessi), Petter and Federico played together a wide range of compositions with musicians within different ensemble settings. That initial musical connection and the shared way of conceiving composed music with improvisation as the founding core led to the idea of working together in the future. Just a few days later, fate would have it that they also met the Austrian pianist Elias Stemeseder, a musician that Federico and Petter already admired for his work with Jim Black and Nels Cline, among others, and his fresh approach to improvised music. For all these reasons, they decided they would have to record an album before they disappeared to different corners of the world.

The following days were spent intensively composing and exploring musical concepts and material to play in a piano trio setting. The central pieces of these explorations were a polished work of rhythm and a subtle approach to harmonies. As a result of that work, the musicians arrived at Happy Thief. Both the names of the album and the trio (Hello Cacus!) were chosen after a sour experience. Just a few weeks after the recording, Petter was back in Europe where his personal bag was stolen, containing the hard drive with the original copy of the album’s recording session. Fortunately the recordings were still stored on sound technician Luis Bacqué’s hard-drive in his studio in New Jersey, where the album was recorded. On the one hand, Hello Cacus! references to the fire-breathing roman god Cacus, son of Vulcan, killer of innocents and perpetrator of all kinds of crimes. On the other hand, Happy Thief is a plain citation to that man that almost made this album impossible to be released.
Federico Isasti

The album contains seven compositions written especially for this record. Ideas and inspiration for each piece comes from a wide range of places: the idea of distorting the notion of time by working with rhythmic displacements (Federico’s Idea), a train travel in Italy (Tren a Formia), the coexistence of diverse melodic motives in a narrow space (N° 3), exploring the nuances between contrasts through intervallic ambiguous harmony, while still anchored in a sense of tonality (Great title), the vastness of a deserted warehouse (Lagerbygning), finishing unfinished old ideas (Gammel idé), using the notes of an arpeggio to derive a subdivision, harmonic and melodic material and form (For Petter).

The music in this album is founded on three fundamental pillars: precise rhythmic ideas, a spacious sense of the harmonic field and the blurring of the frontier between written and improvised music. The formal aspect of the tunes is in the majority of the cases pretty straight forward: exposition of the main theme, improvisation with that material and re-exposition of the theme. Even though this is a common characteristic of the traditional jazz way of improvising, the music finds its identity in the nuances in timber, dynamics, rhythm and harmonies, strongly influenced by Petter and Federico’s conception of improvised music. 

1. For Petter 06:18
2. N° 3 06:44
3. Tren a Formia 04:41
4. Great Title 08:27
5. Lagerbygning 05:41
6. Gammal Ide 05:44
7. Federico's Idea 05:00

Elias Stemeseder | piano
Petter Absjørnsen | upright bass & composition
Federico Isasti | drums & composition

Recorded by Luis Bacqué at Bacqué Recording in New Jersey USA
Mixed and mastered by Florencio Justo at Estudio Dr. F in Buenos Aires, Argentina
Produced by Petter Absjørnsen and Federico Isasti

Original art by Leo Cullari
Design by Nicolas Gaggero

Ari Giancaterino - Chapters (February 2021)

The second studio jazz album released by Ari Giancaterino, this album is inspired by the works of jazz legends including Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. It also features instrumental features including one of Herbie Hancock's 'Maiden Voyage' as well as 90's punk-rock band "Fugazi" with their ballad, 'I'm So Tired'. All other works are original compositions by Ari Giancaterino including "Get Real" and "One for Wayne" (an homage to Wayne Shorter)

The album features incredible performances by the following artists:

1. One for Wayne 05:07
2. Black Cat 04:30
3. Get Real 06:54
4. Maiden Voyage 08:06
5. Hallowed Ground 05:11
6. I'm so Tired 04:07

All compositions are originals by Ari Giancaterino, except for Maiden Voyage (Herbie Hancock) and I'm So Tired (Fugazi)

Sara Sithi-Amnuai - trumpet/flugel
Aaron Shaw - tenor sax
Omree Gal-Oz - piano
Zev Shearn-nance - drums
Luca Ferrara - guitar
Ari Giancaterino - bass

Recorded @ Tritone Studios in Burbank, CA (2021)
Engineer: Talley Sherwood
Mix/Mastering: Maurice Gainen
Album Artwork: Vinnie Corbo

Ra Kalam Bob Moses / Damon Smith duo - Purecircle (February 2022 Balance Point Acoustics)

Dip your fingers in the boiling water.
Scald your fingers.
Let your fingers sing the pain.

From "Sounds" (Klänge) Wassily Kandinsky 1912

1. Let Your Fingers Sing The Pain 06:40
2. Radiated Violet 04:59
3. Purecircle 1 01:02
4. Sound Hangs Hopelessly in the Sky 09:13
5. Wild Foam 03:34
6. True Mortar 07:09
7. Purecircle 2 01:02
8. Heavy Earth 07:27
9. Invisible Bell 05:12
10. Speaking Windows 09:47
11. Purecircle 3 01:04
12. The Blueish Wavelet Tosses 06:46
13. Cooled off Flash 03:37
14. Who Led You in Deeper 09:17

Ra Kalam Bob Moses - drums, percussion, gongs, spring drum
Damon Smith - double bass, Voice (track 2)

Design by Alan Anzalone
Cover art by Ra-Kalam Bob Moses
Mixed and Mastered by Weasel Walter

David J. Sullivan - recording engineer
Recorded at Native Pulse on October 14th 2021, in Quincy, Massachusetts
Double bass parts for Purecircles 1-3 recorded by Ryan Wasbo at Birdcloud studios on January 28th
Purecircles 1-3 mixed by Ryan Wasoba