Chris Williams Quintet - 'Live' (February 2022 cow: Music)

Chris Ryan Williams is an interdisciplinary artist based between NYC and LA and most at home collaborating with contemporary improvisers and experimentalists. He has toured extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe, most recently with Pink Siifu and Negro'6.

Williams has collaborated with creators Greg Tate's Burnt Sugar Arkestra, gabby fluke-mogul, Jessica Ackerly, Jason Nazary, Eyvind Kang, Joanna Mattrey, Miriam Parker, Bennie Maupin, Nicole Mitchell, Fay Victor, Wendy Eisenberg, Luke Stewart, Marjani Forte-Saunders, Eric Revis, and recently Patrick Shiroishi in their duo on Astral Spirits' 'Sans Soleil' (2021).

'Live' is the first release under his name as a leader. It is also the first release of cow: Music, the audio branch of the cow arts program. cow: Music is currently a subsidiary of Astral Spirits Records.

South African writer/ scholar Nombuso Mathibila says of 'Live':

"LIVE is a product of trusted musicianship and spontaneity where the central desire is to see what people do with space collectively under conditions where there is no prescribed direction. This is a white label release under a subsidiary label called cow: Music and it comes off two hours of recording and roughly twenty-eight minutes make it into the album. Throughout this record, Williams plays a frugal acoustic role and much of his contributions take shape in the post-recording phase mainly through editing and the inclusion of electronic sound arrangements that connect the recording into a cohesive improvisational album.

He is quite clear that “there is a certain amount of composition in between the improvisation and this can be heard in the layered rhythmic arrangements in the first half of ‘side A’ before the session moves into a picking improvisational style where sound bounces across instruments in an aesthetic fashion that centers the cinematic character of each instrument." 

1. 'Live' Side Aye 12:47

2. 'Live' Side Bee 15:25

Chris Williams - Trumpet / electronics / collage edit

Patrick Shiroishi - Saxophones / objects

Joshua White - Piano

Eric Revis - Acoustic bass / electronics

Guillermo Brown - Drums / electronics

Produced for release by Gabriel Jermaine Vanlandingham-Dunn

Recorded at the Blue Whale in 2018

Engineered by Bradley Butterworth

Mixed by Jason Nazary

Mastered by: Mikey Young (2021)

Produced for release by Gabriel Jermaine Vanlandingham-Dunn

Recorded at the Blue Whale in 2018

Engineered by Bradley Butterworth

Mixed by Jason Nazary

Mastered by: Mikey Young (2021)

PRE-ORDER

Chris Williams & Patrick Shiroishi - Sans Soleil (May 2021 Astral Spirits)

1. cherry 09:31

2. the last rhodesian was a lie 09:31

3. history is violent 10:26

4. in the pines, in the pines 12:36

5. present looms 06:07

6. [mis]quoting spirituals 10:24

7. winters flow into springs 06:36

Chris Williams: Trumpet, Cornet, Flugelhorn, Synth, Objects

Patrick Shiroishi: Alto, Bari, Sopranino, Soprano and Tenor Saxophones, Clarinet, Electric Toothbrush, Glockenspiel

Engineered by: Jared Rodriguez

Mixed and Mastered: Weston Olencki

Pre-order

Vitor Pereira Quintet - Somewhere in the Middle (December 5, 2018) + UK Autumn Tour

Vitor Pereira Quintet

“Somewhere in the Middle” album release

and UK tour

“Somewhere in the middle” is the title of the third album of original music by this London based contemporary jazz band.

It embodies an idea which naturally spilt from this music where the audience meet the musicians in a symbiotic middle plane of mutual stimulation.

With a variety of influences from “Vijay Iyer” to “Queens of the stone age”, this compositions are carefully thought to fulfil a mixed bag of particular tastes of a refined but diverse audience whilst at the same time they offer excellent platforms for the musicians to shape and bend the music as they please and feel on the moment.

Being it a thrill for head-banging guitar riffs or the complexity of contrapuntal interweaving melodic lines, this music will induce a comprehensive and contrasting journey.

We live in a polarised world today, both musically and socially and although the fringes can be very trending, this album tends to sit on the idea that there’s plenty of space to be innovative and unique when you navigate in the middle.

The choice of musicians was equally important. All of them are extremely open and versatile musicians which understand the music very well and naturally take a lot of liberties both on the written and improvised material.

This is essential for the music to have the elastic and organic sound it has as well as to produce the cohesive nature of this album’s idea.

Vitor Pereira

Vitor Pereira was born in Porto/Portugal where he studied mainly classical music and classical guitar.
His interest in Jazz took him to participate in seminars and private lessons with the likes of Pat Metheny, Jonathan Kreisberg, Gilad Hekselman or Aaron Goldberg to name a few and ultimately led him to London in 2004 to study at the “Middlesex University”.

Living in London since then he is an active name in the UK and Europe playing with names like: James Allsopp, Asaf Sirkis, Josh Arcoleo, Binker Goldings, Marc Demuth, etc…

Leading his quintet, Vitor has published two albums and had several radio plays, interviews and numerous performances across Europe like the “Portajazz festival” in Porto.

Vitor Pereira Quintet

Vitor Pereira - guitar/composition

Chris Williams - alto sax

Alam Nathoo - tenor sax

Mick Coady - bass

Adam Teixeira - drums

UK Tour - Autumn 2018

08/11/2018 - Cardiff - Cafe Jazz

09/11/2018 - Bristol - Bebop Club

10/11/2018 - Shrewsbury - The Hive

12/11/2018 - Manchester - The Whiskey Jar

13/11/2018 - Birmingham - The Spotted Dog

16/11/2018 - Birmingham - Jazzlines

17/11/2018 - Brighton - The Verdict

18/11/2018 - Southampton - Southampton Modern Jazz Club

05/12/2018 - London - The Vortex

Official release date