Alister Spence / Joe Williamson / Christopher Cantillo - Curve (December 2021)

‘Brilliant musicianship, masterful playing and imaginative improvisational skills.’ Eyal Hareuveni, Salt Peanuts

‘Distinctive cohesiveness’ John Shand, Sydney Morning Herald

‘The hope is that this trio didn’t just “Begin” but will continue to make CDs like this for a long time.’ Ken Waxman, The Wholenote

Curve, is the second release by Australian pianist Spence, and Canadian born ex-pat Joe Williamson, and Christopher Cantillo from Sweden.

The trio first met in 2009 when Spence was invited to play at the Vilnius Jazz Festival. Since then, they have performed in 2011, 2013, and 2015, in Sweden, Norway, and the UK, as a trio, and with sax players Raymond MacDonald (Scotland), and Daniel Rourke (Australia).

1. Örnsberg Songbook 1 00:53

2. Deflect 04:59

3. Opening 08:42

4. Örnsberg Songbook 2 01:53

5. Slow Spin 07:55

6. Point of Rest 06:54

7. Örnsberg Songbook 3 00:43

8. Modulus 08:21

9. Generation 07:26

10. Örnsberg Songbook 4 01:01

11. Distribution 07:50

12. Örnsberg Songbook 5 01:31

Alister Spence – piano, prepared piano

Joe Williamson – double bass

Christopher Cantillo – drums, percussion

Recorded at Ton & Tråd, Örnsberg, Sweden on 24th February 2011

Mixed by Tim Whitten, November 2016

Mastered by Doug Henderson, September 2021

Producer: Alister Spence

Design: Cheryl Orsini

Cover and disc photographs: Alister Spence

Recording ©: 2021 Alister Spence

Artwork ©: 2021 Alister Spence

©All rights reserved

High quality audio files available for download: 24bit 48kHz

PRE ORDER

Satoko Fujii / Alister Spence - Any News (October 1, 2021)

Any News is an album of piano duets recorded over the internet between Kobe, Japan and Sydney, Australia during the Covid-19 pandemic. Satoko and Alister began to collaborate on this project early in 2020 and develop ideas for co-written piano duet pieces, meeting occasionally on the internet to rehearse and explore. This album is the result of three recording sessions in September 2021. It is the second duo release by Fujii and Spence, following on from their piano and fender rhodes album intelsat (2018, ASM007).

‘this is the sound of genuine discovery, founded upon decades of experience but unfettered by habit.’

Bill Meyer, Dusted Magazine (review of intelsat)

1. Dice Piece 2 04:29

2. Across the Equator 09:32

3. improvisation 1 05:46

4. The First Day of Autumn 11:07

5. Puzzle Piece 06:04

6. Dice Piece 3 05:03

7. Ping Pong 03:37

8. Improvisation 2 11:07

9. Dice Piece 1 03:57

Satoko Fujii – piano

Alister Spence – piano

PREORDER

Phillip Johnston & the Coolerators - Diggin' Bones (October 26, 2018)

Diggin’ Bones  Down Under:

NY Jazz Composer & Saxophonist Phillip Johnston (Microscopic Septet) Joins Forces in Australia with

Bassist Lloyd Swanton (The Necks), Organist Alister Spence & Drummer Nic Cecire to

Coolerate a New Sound & Release an Animated Album

When composer / saxophonist / bandleader Phillip Johnston, leader of New York’s legendary jazz ensemble The Microscopic Septet, moved from the Big Apple to Sydney, he assembled several of Australia’s best musicians – Alister Spence, Lloyd Swanton, Nic Cecire – and began brewing a distinctive and lively Australian ensemble. The Sydney-based Phillip Johnston & the Cooleratorsnow releases its first album, Diggin’ Bones, whose unique sound combines funky organ combo jazz with modernist jazz composition, including a touch of klezmer. Produced by The Necks’ Lloyd Swanton and featuring some of Australia’s finest jazz/multi-genre improvisers, Diggin’ Bones shows a new side of Johnston’s music. 

The Coolerators brings together two of Australia’s most internationally acclaimed touring musicians, Alister Spence (Alister Spence Trio, Clarion Fracture Zone, AAO) and Lloyd Swanton (The Necks, the catholics) with one of Sydney’s most in-demand rhythm section players, Nic Cecire. The music covers a range of styles but avant organ jazz is at the centre of it. 

Johnston has led Phillip Johnston & the Cooleratorssince 2005, alongside several other live performance and recording projects, including Sydney’s Greasy Chicken Orchestraand New York’s Microscopic Septet, and while extensively touring with Wordless!, his multi-media theatrical collaboration with illustrator Art Spiegelman and the band The Silent Six.  But beginning in 2018, while still involved in those other projects, Johnston began focussing on the Coolerators as his main vehicle for live performance.

Diggin’ Bones adds a new chapter to Johnston’s extensive discography, which began in 1983 with The Micros’ Take The Z Train. His most recent previous releases include numerous CDs on Cuneiform Recordsby The Microscopic Septet(with co-composer Joel Forrester) and Fast ‘N’ Bulbous (a Captain Beefheart tribute band that he co-leads with Gary Lucas). All of these releases have been widely and exceptionally reviewed (all receiving 4 stars in Downbeat) and received many Best of the Year critical listings. 

Many of Johnston’s releases feature exemplary art work by notable illustrators, including Art Spiegelman and Barry Blitt, among others, and Diggin’ Bones is no exception, featuring art and cover design by Keith LoBue. Both groovy and cerebral, the Coolerators play animated and funky dance music for a cartoon universe.

The label Asynchronous is releasing Phillip Johnston and the Coolerators’ Diggin’ Bones simultaneously with another Phillip Johnston album, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, a soundtrack that Johnston composed for the world’s first feature-length animated film, a 1926 silhouette animation by female film pioneer Lotte Reiniger. In addition to Johnston, two of the five musicians on the Prince Achmed soundtrack album are members of The Coolerators: Nic Cecire and Alister Spence. Johnston has composed, recorded, and performed live numerous soundtracks for silent film. He has also published writings and presented conference papers on the subject. In addition, Johnstonis author of ‘Jazzin’ The Silents: Jazz and Improvised Music in Contemporary Scores for Silent Film’ for the upcoming/2019 book, When Jazz meets Cinema, edited by Emilio Audissino and Emile Wennekes (Brepols: Turnhout, Belgium).

Phillip Johnston & the Coolerators

Phillip Johnston: soprano, alto sax

Alister Spence: organ

Lloyd Swanton: bass

Nic Cecire: drums

1. Frankly

2. What Is Real?

3. Diggin’ Bones

4. Temporary Blindness

5. Later

6. The Revenant

7. Legs Yet

8. Trial By Error

9. Regrets #17

10. Ducket Got A Whole In It

All tracks by Phillip Johnston © Jedible Music (BMI)

except Track 6 by Michael Hurley © Snocko Music (BMI)

Produced by Lloyd Swanton

Recorded & mixed at Rancom St Studios by Tim Whitten in Oct/Nov 2017

Assistant Engineer: Antonia Gauci

Mastered at Sound Heaven Studios by Michael Lynch

Art and cover design by Keith LoBue

Phillip Johnston - The Adventures of Prince Achmed (October 26, 2018)

“Johnston’s soundtrack adds an extra dimension to the 2D-nature of the animation, with energetic jazz layered over the pre-recorded percussion track that builds up and flows through the film. While Johnston and Reineger’s compositions are each complex in their own ways, they come together simply and beautifully, stripping animation back to its abstract qualities of light, shadow, image and sound.”

– Anna Madeleine, The Guardian, 2015 (MONA FOMA)

Composer, Saxophonist, Bandleader, and Film Music Scholar 

PHILLIP JOHNSTON

Conjures a Magical Soundtrack for 

THE WORLD’S FIRST FEATURE-LENGTH ANIMATED FILM

– THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED –

to Bring to Life the Silhouette Animation by Groundbreaking Female Filmmaker 

LOTTE REINIGER

Awakening the Wonders of One Thousand and One Nights

This enchanting album contains the music that Phillip Johnston composed as a soundtrack for The Adventures of Prince Achmed, a 1926 silent silhouette animation that is a landmark in cinema history – the world’s first feature-length animated film.  Created by female film pioneer Charlotte “Lotte” Reiniger, the animated film is based upon One Thousand and One Nights, a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales often referred to as The Arabian Nights. To breathe Reiniger’s silhouettes to life, Johnston composed a continuous score of 65 minutes of music to be performed live with the film by a quartet of soprano sax, trombone, and two keyboards, against a pre-recorded track of samples, loops and live drums. For this recording of The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the music is performed by Johnston (soprano saxophone) with Australian musicians James Greening (trombone), Alister Spence (organ, keyboards), Casey Golden (organ, keyboards), and Nic Cecire (drums), and broken by the composer into twelve individual tracks.

Phillip Johnston has been composing and performing original scores for silent films for 25 years in both his native USA and current home in Australia. His previous silent film scores include The Unknown (Browning, 1927), The Merry Frolics of Méliès (Méliès, 1902-1909), Page of Madness (Kinugasa, 1926), Faust (Murnau, 1926), the first three of which were released on CD by Avant, Koch Jazz and Asynchronous, respectively. Johnston’s interest in silent film projects includes Wordless!, his multi-media collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic artist Art Spiegelman, which features silent films and animation, spoken word/ Spiegelman’s historical essays, and live music by Johnston and his ensemble The Silent Six. Wordless! debuted at the Sydney Opera House on October 5, 2013 and has since been touring worldwide, including a nine-date tour of the USA and performances at the 2016 London Jazz Festival, Buenos Aires’ Comicópolis, and the Philharmonie de Paris. The film and music The Adventures of Prince Achmed have been performed across Australia, including the Sydney VIVID Festival, MONA FOMA and the Woodford Folk Festival, and Johnston is looking forward to touring the project overseas.

In addition to writing music for silent films and animation, Johnston has written articles on silent films for books and scholarly journals, in addition to presenting numerous conference papers.  He is author of the chapter “Jazzin’ The Silents: Jazz and Improvised Music in Contemporary Scores for Silent Film” for the upcoming book, When Jazz meets Cinema, edited by Emilio Audissino and Emile Wennekes (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2019). 

The label Asynchronous is releasing Johnston’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed simultaneously with another Johnston project: Diggin’ Bones, a jazz album by Phillip Johnston & The Coolerators. The Coolerators are Johnston’s main Australia-based live band, and include  Johnston (soprano/alto saxophone), Nick Cecire (drums), Alister Spence (organ) – all three of whom perform on The Adventures of Prince Achmed – in addition to Lloyd Swanton (bass), also of The Necks. 

Phillip Johnston: soprano saxophone

James Greening: trombone

Alister Spence: organ, keyboards

Casey Golden: organ, keyboards

Nic Cecire: drums

1. Prelude

2. The African Magician

3. Prince Achmed

4. Pari Banu Kidnapped

5. Adventures in China

6. The Witch & The Wedding

7. Take Me to Wak-Wak!

8. The Magic Lamp

9. Aladdin's Tale

10. The Witch vs The Magician

11. The Battle of The Spirits

12. Return to the Land of the Mortals

All tracks by Phillip Johnston © Jedible Music (BMI)

Recorded in Aug/Sep 2013 at Q Studios, Sydney

Record and pre-mix engineer: Richard Hundy

Final mix and mastering by Paul Bromley/Tanuki Studios

Cover design: Keith Lobue

Phillip Johnston - The Adventures of Prince Achmed (October 26, 2018)

This CD contains music that was composed as a soundtrack which is performed live with the The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) by Lotte Reiniger, a silent silhouette animation, considered by many to be the first feature length animated film, and based upon One Thousand and One Nights, a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales often known in English as The Arabian Nights. The music, which when performed with the film comprises a continuous score of 65 minutes, is here broken into individual tracks. It is performed live by a quartet of soprano sax, trombone, and two keyboards, against a pre-recorded track of samples, loops and live drums. 

Phillip Johnston has been composing and performing original scores for silent films for 25 years. His previous silent film scores include The Unknown (Browning, 1927), The Merry Frolics of Méliès (Méliès, 1902-1909), Page of Madness (Kinugasa, 1926), Faust (Murnau, 1926), the first three of which have been previously released on CD. [Wordless!, his collaboration with graphic artist Art Spiegelman, is also a variant on this kind of work.] The film and music have been performed across Australia, including the Sydney VIVID Festival, MONA FOMA and the Woodford Folk Festival. As of this writing it has yet to be performed overseas.

Phillip Johnston: soprano saxophone

James Greening: trombone

Alister Spence: organ, keyboards

Casey Golden: organ, keyboards

Nic Cecire: drums

1. Prelude

2. The African Magician

3. Prince Achmed

4.Pari Banu Kidnapped

5. Adventures in China

6. The Witch & The Wedding

7. Take Me to Wak-Wak!

8. The Magic Lamp

9. Aladdin's Tale

10. The Witch vs The Magician

11. The Battle of The Spirits

12. Return to the Land of the Mortals

All tracks by Phillip Johnston © Jedible Music (BMI)

Recorded in Aug/Sep 2013 at Q Studios, Sydney

Record and pre-mix engineer: Richard Hundy

Final mix and mastering by Paul Bromley/Tanuki Studios

Cover design: Keith Lobue

Phillip Johnston & the Coolerators - Diggin' Bones (October 26, 2018)

Diggin’ Bones, the first CD by Phillip Johnston & the Coolerators features a unique sound which combines funky organ combo jazz with modernist jazz composition. Produced by The Necks’ Lloyd Swanton and featuring some of Australia finest jazz/multi-genre improvisers, this recording shows a new side of Johnston’s music, and recording history which began in 1983 with Take The Z Train by The Microscopic Septet. 

The band brings together two of Australia’s most internationally acclaimed touring musicians, Alister Spence (Alister Spence Trio, Clarion Fracture Zone, AAO) and Lloyd Swanton (The Necks, the catholics) with one of Sydney’s most in-demand rhythm section players, Nic Cecire. The music covers a range of styles but avant organ jazz is at the centre of it. 

Phillip Johnston

Simultaneously embracing the past and the future makes perfect sense when you consider the Johnston’s most recent previous releases include CDs by The Microscopic Septet and Fast ‘N’ Bulbous on Cuneiform Records, which have been widely and exceptionally reviewed (all receiving 4 starts in Downbeat) and resulting many Best of the Year critical listings. 

Both groovy and cerebral, the Coolerators play funky dance music for a cartoon universe.

Phillip Johnston & the Coolerators 

Phillip Johnston: soprano, alto sax 

Alister Spence: organ 

Lloyd Swanton: bass 

Nic Cecire: drums 

All tracks by Phillip Johnston © Jedible Music (BMI) 

except Track 6 by Michael Hurley © Snocko Music (BMI) 

1. Frankly

2. What Is Real?

3. Diggin’ Bones

4. Temporary Blindness

5. Later

6. The Revenant

7. Legs Yet

8. Trial By Error

9. Regrets #17

10. Ducket Got A Whole In It

Produced by Lloyd Swanton

Recorded & mixed at Rancom St Studios by Tim Whitten in Oct/Nov 2017

Assistant Engineer: Antonia Gauci

Mastered at Sound Heaven Studios by Michael Lynch

Art and cover design by Keith LoBue

Satoko Fujii: Kira Kira - Bright Force (LIBRA RECORDS 2018)

Satoko Fujii Turns 60!

Kira Kira, a Co-operative Band Featuring Musicians from Japan and Australia Deliver Powerful, Uplifting Music on new album Bright Force

Out April 27 via Libra Records, album features Fujii, Natsuki Tamura, Alister Spence, and Ittetsu Takemura

Pianist-composer Satoko Fujii explains that in Japanese, the name of this collaborative quartet, Kira Kira, means to sparkle or twinkle brilliantly. And that’s just what the music does on the band’s live recording Bright Force (Libra, April 27, 2018). Fujii, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, Australian keyboardist Alister Spence, and drummer Ittetsu Takemura form an incandescent group whose performance flashes powerfully with brilliant ideas, color, and feeling.

The band is an outgrowth of a long musical relationship between Fujii, Spence, and Tamura. They first met in 2008 when Spence’s trio shared a bill with Fujii’s ma-do quartet in Sydney, Australia. In the ensuing years, Spence and Fujii performed as a duet in Australia and later in Japan on a tour that also included concerts with Fujii’s orchestras in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Kobe. In 2016, Australians Spence and drummer Tony Buck of The Necks joined their Japanese companions to form Kira Kira. The Melbourne Jazz Festival commissioned new compositions from band for their appearance at the festival that year. “We had so much fun that we wanted to play the compositions again in Japan,” Fujii says. 

They scheduled a tour of Japan in 2017, but a scheduling conflict prevented Buck from making the trip. Tamura suggested 32-year-old Takemura, whom he knew from working in the Fumio Itabashi band, to replace him. “We were all curious to see how differently the music would turn out with a different drummer,” Fujii says.

Happily, the music turned out so well they decided to release it on CD.

One of the album’s many delights is hearing how distinctive each composer’s contribution is and how the band members bring it to life. Spence’s “Because of the Sun” starts the album with a focused burst of shimmering energy. Fujii, Spence, and Takemura entwine in a roiling skein of sound that forms the basis for a carefully shaped piano solo from Fujii and some high-note pyrotechnics from Tamura. 

Tamura’s “Nat 4” is just as explosive as Spence’s piece, but utterly different. Tamura’s written melodies are bold and declamatory and when he solos, his high notes leap into the Louis Armstrong stratosphere. In his solo, Spence proves himself a melodic improviser prone to unpredictable turns of phrase as well as a shaper and constructor of highly detailed electronic sounds. The quartet shapes and reshapes the music, ranging from passages of rapid-fire exchanges of short spikey phrases to avant-rock episodes to slow, spacious, glimmering sections.

Kira Kira Bright Force

The three-part “Luna Lionfish” is a Fujii composition full of surreal juxtapositions and sharp contrasts that some how cohere into an organic whole. And while the band engages in close collective interplay while negotiating all the composition’s twists, there are also powerful individual solos as well. Tamura takes a wildly expressive muted solo on the second part; Fujii’s unaccompanied solo forms a bridge between the second and third parts; Takemura’s taut, exciting, and melodic drum solo is a highlight of part 3, and Spence is in the center of the action, adding color and texture to ensembles and matching wits in duets with different members of the band. 

“In this group it felt like we were having a party and everyone was having a good time,” Fujii says. “And that is always the best formula for making good music.”

Fujii’s unprecedented birthday bash continues in May with the release of Triad (Long Song Records), which showcases a one-time trio with Italian soprano saxophonist Gianni Mimmo and American bassist Joe Fonda. The summer months start to heat up in June with 1538 by This Is It!, a trio featuring Fujii with Tamura on trumpet and Takashi Itani on percussion. Later in the year, Fujii and bassist Fonda will follow up their acclaimed 2016 duo album with a new one. A new recording by Orchestra Tokyo and the debut of a new piano-bass-drums trio will also arrive. Other surprises and delights will be in store over the course of the year, in what is sure to be an unforgettable outpouring of musical riches. 

Keyboardist-composer Alister Spence is “utterly compelling,” according to Jazz Journal, UK, and the Sydney Morning Herald calls him, “The cutting edge of modern Australia defined.” His trio of 20 years’ standing has toured the world and released six acclaimed CDs. Japanese trumpeter and composer Natsuki Tamura is internationally recognized for a unique musical vocabulary that blends extended techniques with jazz lyricism. He leads Gato Libre, a quartet that features Fujii on accordion, and performs as a duo with Fujii as well as in many of her other projects ranging from trio to orchestra. Ittetsu Takamura is a versatile young drummer who can not only hold his own in a band like Kira Kira but also works regularly with saxophonist Sadao Watanabe. 

Critics and fans alike hail pianist and composer Satoko Fujii as one of the most original voices in jazz today. She’s “a virtuoso piano improviser, an original composer and a bandleader who gets the best collaborators to deliver," says John Fordham in The Guardian. In concert and on more than 80 albums as a leader or co-leader, she synthesizes jazz, contemporary classical, avant-rock, and Japanese folk music into an innovative music instantly recognizable as hers alone. Over the years, Fujii has led some of the most consistently creative ensembles in modern improvised music, including her trio with bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Jim Black, the Min-Yoh Ensemble, and an electrifying avant-rock quartet featuring drummer Tatsuya Yoshida of The Ruins. Her ongoing duet project with husband Natsuki Tamura released their sixth recording, Kisaragi, in 2017.

 “The duo's commitment to producing new sounds based on fresh ideas is second only to their musicianship,” says Karl Ackermann in All About Jazz. Aspiration, a CD by an ad hoc band featuring Wadada Leo Smith, Tamura, and Ikue Mori, was released in 2017 to wide acclaim. “Four musicians who regularly aspire for greater heights with each venture reach the summit together on Aspiration,” writes S. Victor Aaron in Something Else. She records infrequently as an unaccompanied soloist, but Solo (Libra), the first of her projected 12 birthday-year albums, led Dan McClenaghan to enthuse in All About Jazz, that the album “more so than her other solo affairs—or any of her numerous ensembles for that matter—deals in beauty, delicacy of touch, graceful melodicism.” As the leader of no less than five orchestras in the U.S., Germany, and Japan, Fujii has also established herself as one of the world’s leading composers for large jazz ensembles, leading Cadence magazine to call her, “the Ellington of free jazz.” 

www.satokofujii.com