A first-call accompanist, producer, composer and bandleader, New York bassist Massimo Biolcati is known as a founding member of Gilfema, the acclaimed collective trio with Hungarian drummer Ferenc Nemeth and West African guitarist and vocalist Lionel Loueke.
1. Dario Immaginario 06:07
2. Adaptation 07:16
3. Emma's Dilemma 06:41
4. Love Is Stronger Than Pride 05:00
5. Along Came Betty 07:25
6. Estate 05:14
7. Momenta 05:34
8. Gumbo Blues 05:40
9. In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning 04:13
Massimo Biolcati - Bass (all tracks)
Tracks: 1, 4, 5, 7, 9
Phil Dizack - Trumpet
Kevin Hays - Piano
Kendrick Scott - Drums
Recorded at Bunker Studios in Brooklyn, NY by Nolan Thies on February 27, 2020.
Track 3
Jaleel Shaw - Alto Sax
Lex Korten - Piano
Clarence Penn - Drums
Recorded at Bunker Studios in Brooklyn, NY by Alex Conroy on February 8, 2020.
Tracks: 2, 6, 8
John Ellis - Tenor Sax
Mike Moreno - Guitar
Rodney Green - Drums
Recorded at Bunker Studios in Brooklyn, NY by Aaron Nevezie on November 4, 2020.
Produced by Massimo Biolcati
Mixed and mastered by Dave Darlington at Bass Hit Recording, New York, NY
Live at Diese Onze was recorded in April/2019 in the beautiful Montreal Club, Diese Onze. Manuel Valera's trio is composed of Hans Glawischnig and Clarence Penn. the CD features nine originals and standard performed. The performance is kinetic, and the connection between these three artist is unavoidable. Some tracks have intricate arrangements while others offer very organic and interactive versions of some of jazz's most beloved works such as Whisper Not, Darn That Dream and But Not for me.
1. Rhythm-A-Ning 07:55
2. Whisper Not 08:55
3. Tres Palabras 08:16
4. Evidence 07:06
5. Ballade 07:48
6. But Not For Me 05:42
7. Darn That Dream 06:39
8. Searching 08:03
9. What Is This Thing Called Love 08:21
Manuel Valera (piano)
Hans Glawischnig (bass)
Clarence Penn (drums)
Recorded Live at Diese Onze in Montreal, Canada on April/2019
Biello’s debut release “Vagabond Soul” deftly combines a modernistic sense of harmony with lyrical, heartfelt melodies. Fueled by a diverse combination of post-bop, electronica, and folk sentimentalities, “Vagabond Soul” weaves deeply personal stories for a set of daring, bold, and unique performances. Featuring luminaries Phil Markowitz (piano), John Benitez (bass) and Clarence Penn (drums) as well as special guests Vincent Lionti (viola), Paul Jones (tenor) and Andrew Renfroe (guitar).
WAW-NYC project is a unique fusion of various personalities, which links two distant cities with the power of music of their jazz representatives. Compositions are created specially on this occasion and give experienced improvisers an opportunity to interact while playing music together, where European harmonic concept mixes with the culture of rhythm from the birthplace of jazz and Cuban zeal. WAW-NYC is a premiere project of Marek Napiórkowski, in which, through music, dynamically developing Warsaw encounters New York - vibrant capital of jazz and modern art.
The Bay Area saxophonist / composer's 11th recording as leader or co-leader is a labor of love that reflects both his keen sense of the history of the music and his infinite capacity to SWING. Citing the profound influence of seven sax masters - Michael Brecker, Sonny Rollins, Dave Liebman, Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson, John Coltrane and Paul Desmond - Zilber, along with New York greats Dave Kikoski on piano, bassist James Genus, and drummer Clarence Penn, has fashioned a potent homage that is infused with all-knowing nods to his heroes. "...art music of the highest order performed with passion, wit and verve." JAZZTIMES.
Enjoying a career which includes key roles with prominent UK symphony orchestras and big bands, plus recording/touring projects with Aretha Franklin, Quincy Jones, Tom Jones and Randy Brecker (to name but a few), trumpeter and composer/arranger Ryan Quigley now unveils his ten-track album What Doesn’t Kill You – a quintet release with Paul Booth (tenor sax, flutes), Steve Hamilton (piano, Fender Rhodes), Michael Janisch (double bass) and Clarence Penn (drums).
Having worked for a number of years with Scottish band Brass Jaw, as well as releasing his own album Laphroaig-ian Slip, Quigley’s experience shines through in this new set of originals which suggests the passion of early ‘60s hard-bop and early ‘70s fusion, yet is up to date in forward-thinking appeal. Here is music born out of strong compositional melody which, in turn, sparks honest improvisational freedom; and while it features the leader’s assured, incisive trumpet, the sense of group coequality remains blissfully evident throughout this near-hour-long session.
The swinging ‘Doctor Stage’ couldn’t be more infectious, Paul Booth’s effervescent tenor imaginings leaping off one of Quigley’s memorable, Freddie Hubbard-style unison riffs ahead of the trumpeter’s own, soaring improvisations. Slowly shifting ‘Fire Eyes’ shimmers broadly to Steve Hamilton’s piano and Clarence Penn’s soft-malleted percussion – a towering landscape of romantic horn textures embellished by distant, stadium-fanfare trumpet.
Characterized by Janisch’s simple, leaping figures and Clarence Penn’s softly pulsing rhythms, the lazy heat of ‘Green Light’ spotlights Hamilton’s eloquent piano, punctuated by gentle trumpet and sax phrasing; and an underlying poignancy in ‘Hymn To Their Homeland’ is affirmed by the creative openness of its solo bass introduction and the elegant mystery of Paul Booth’s low, swooning flute – an episode which is both affecting and majestic.
The deep groove of title track ‘What Doesn’t Kill You’ offers still greater freedom as Quigley’s blistering, stratospheric technique combines with Penn’s tumultuous drumming; and supported by Michael Janisch’s agile bass resonances, while Hamilton’s Fender Rhodes extemporisations are especially sweet. ‘Say What You See’ possesses that contemporary jazz-fusion edge, its rattling propulsion encouraging fiery soloing amidst the brightest ensemble colors (Penn matching both Quigley and Booth for voltaic energy); and the wide swing of ‘The Long Journey Home’ pulls out all the stops – a full-on vibe with the melodic framework to prompt powerful, often raucous individual expressions.
This release – bookended by lyrical, echoic solo trumpet – finds Ryan Quigley delighting in the opportunity of working with good friends who share his innate desire for musical integrity, and whom he also counts amongst his musical heroes: “My hope is that this recording captures something of that ambition, and that listeners can feel its warmth, depth of feeling… and friendship.”
“Live Jazz Playing at its best.”★★★★ The Guardian (live review)
"Full of sparkle and dynamics... Hugely enjoyable."London Jazz
"A fine band of like minded musicians... Classy."★★★★ Jazzwise Magazine
"An exhilarating evening of jazz... Steeped in the traditions of the idiom, but in no way restricted by those traditions."Seen & Heard International (live review)
"Strong melodic themes are a constant throughout and the playing from a stellar cast is terrific... Bright, inventive and vivacious."★★★★ The Jazz Mann
"Ryan Quigley proves with his latest recording that he can write swinging and engaging tunes as well as he plays them. A very satisfying set indeed demanding frequent replays."★★★★ All About Jazz
"Strong melodies, a cohesive, collective sound, and the assured improvisational flights one would associate with Quigley and his band mates."Bebop Spoken Here
"It’s a great set of tunes, firmly grounded in the tradition as codified in the hard-swinging 1970's, with everyone playing their hearts out and a real feeling of warmth and friendship between the participants."Jazz Views - Album of the week
"An absorbing album which shows how a contemporary sensibility can be applied to past jazz genres to create something new and original."Sandy Brown Jazz
A live performance took place at the Vanguard in New York one night in April 2015: Enrico Pieranunzi played in quartet with Donny McCaslin on sax, Scott Colley on double bass and Clarence Penn on drums. In the sold-out club, the lights were dimmed, the audience stopped talking and, that night in New York, jazz started to flow out from the only Italian artist who has played as a leader three times on that legendary stage. The concert was recorded and released on CAM JAZZ. The music Pieranunzi and his quartet deliver here is all portrayed in the CD title, “New Spring”: renewal, vital energy, promises that come true, in the city that has always been the cradle, school and springboard for, but also and again the point of arrival of jazz, the city whose breath is perceived, between tracks, in the clapping hands of the audience at the Vanguard. This is a modern, internationally-oriented jazz, entirely featuring original tracks, except for the standard “I Hear A Rhapsody”, and resulting from the interplay among four real jazz giants, who skillfully blend their forceful personalities into excellent music. The Vanguard is the shrine of American jazz and here, in the amazing harmonies and unexpected melodies of Pieranunzi’s superb, creative piano, you can feel it throbbing. You can almost see Scott Colley filling that small historic stage with his double bass, grinding out rhythm and weaving passionate, moving melodies. You can picture the audience captivated by the scratchy voice of Donny McCaslin’s saxophone that soars with soft phrases and mingles with Clarence Penn’s rich, full drumming, while Lorraine Gordon, the legendary owner of the Vanguard, seated in a corner of her reign, attentively listens to each note. “New Spring” is ever-evolving music with an immediate impact on the listeners’ emotions. It is a small great journey through New York, Italian, American and European jazz: a picture, a photograph, a moment, a film clip, a night to be enjoyed and breathed wherever you like that then makes you really want to pick up and go to the place where jazz is, maybe precisely in spring, hoping for another beguiling April in New York. Under the supervision of music producer Ermanno Basso, New Spring was recorded live in April 2015 at The Village Vanguard, NYC, by SoundByte Engineer Paul Zinman and mixed by James Farber at Sear Sound in NYC, and mastered by Danilo Rossi.
In the years between the two World Wars, the Dada movement questioned, altered, teased and undermined the very idea of art. A century later, trumpeter Dave Douglas and pianist Frank Woeste draw inspiration from that “art of reinvention” with their collaborative album Dada People, due out October 2016 via Greenleaf Music. Perhaps no single artist embodies Dada’s slippery juxtapositions quite like Man Ray. Both French and American, commercial and avant-garde, Jewish by birth and mysterious by design, Man Ray epitomized the conflicting personae and attitudes that have come to define so much of the modern art world of the last century. Bridging the Atlantic through support from the French American Jazz Exchange, Douglas and Woeste explore those concepts through a 21st century lens, realized by a stellar quartet rounded out by bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Clarence Penn.
Recorded at The Samurai Hotel Recording Studio, Astoria NY on January 21-22, 2015.
Recording Engineered by David Stoller
Mixed and Mastered by Tyler McDiarmid
Artwork and Design by Russell Moore
Photography credit: Portrait of Man Ray and Salvador Dali, Paris. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs
Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-42535
Clarence Penn plays Canopus drums, Aquarian heads and Zildjian cymbals and sticks.
Thanks to Matt and Clarence, David Stoller, Tyler McDiarmid, Mark Micklethwaite, Jakob Flarer at Saudades Tourneen, Reno di Matteo at Anteprima Productions, the French American Jazz Exchange and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.
Thanks also to Ibrahim Maalouf, Emmanuel Morlet, Sara Donnelly, Jeannette Vuocolo, Angela Morris, Lia, Oscar, Leon and Clara.
DADA PEOPLE has been made possible through the French-American Jazz Exchange, a joint program of FACE Foundation and Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, with generous funding from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Florence Gould Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Institut Français, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication and Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs de Musique (“SACEM”).
Uri Caine is best known as a genre-warping, restlessly inventive pianist and sonic thinker whose every project is as predictably unpredictable as the last. But the piano trio remains a touchstone for Caine, who returns regularly to apply his expansive imagination to that core jazz format. On his latest CD, Calibrated Thickness, Caine debuts a new trio with two longtime collaborators: drummer Clarence Penn and bassist Mark Helias. “There’s a lot of freedom in the piano trio,” Caine says. “It’s very open and loose. We keep the structure together, but within that I like the freedom it offers.” Though the title is a phrase that Caine stumbled across in a technical manual, Calibrated Thickness vividly captures the sense of controlled dynamics and calculated density that this trio so ably masters. The album’s 15 songs are in a sense a distillation of the musical identity that Caine, Penn and Helias have forged over the last few years as a trio (in addition to many more in different contexts). Live, Caine’s memorable compositions are landmarks that the trio happens upon in the course of lengthy improvisations, fluidly morphing from one tune to the next at a moment’s whim. On Calibrated Thickness, the tunes are presented in a more pristine fashion, showcasing Caine’s gift for witty, agile melodies, inspiring structures and wide-ranging stylistic approaches. The short pieces (few of which top five minutes) give the trio the opportunity to spark concise, focused improvisations from the flint of the leader’s well-honed compositions. “When you’re playing and writing music you’re always calibrating how to build it or structure it or form it,” Caine explains.
The relationship between Caine and Penn dates back a couple of decades, most notably in trumpeter Dave Douglas’ quintet that also featured saxophonists Chris Potter or Donny McCaslin and bassist James Genus. The pianist came to work with Helias through their shared tenure in Don Byron’s band. Joining the trio on three tracks is the ingenious cornetist Kirk Knuffke, whose sharp, probing sound adds an extra edge to the pieces on which he appears. Caine offers a straightforward, no-nonsense reason for assembling this particular trio, his first release in that guise since 2011’s Siren with bassist John Hébert and drummer Ben Perowsky. “I like the sound,” he says, a simple enough proposition but one that can be maddeningly elusive. “I like the way Clarence accompanies and sets things up; Mark has a really warm sound and is really flexible. There’s a lot of room to move with them.” The 15 Caine originals contained on Calibrated Thickness run the gamut of styles, from jagged, angular modern pieces to more straight-ahead swingers that harken back to Caine’s early days playing hard bop in Philadelphia (albeit with his usual idiosyncratic twists and turns) to more lyrical, ballad-inspired playing that spotlights the warm expressiveness that sometimes gets eclipsed by his bold eclecticism.
The album kicks off with the powerful, rollicking swing of “Manahatta,” titled for the original Lenni Lenape name for the island at the epicenter of the jazz world. “Woke Up This Morning” uses a blues cliché to label a piece of pure, rattletrap abstraction that depicts the trio’s explosive spontaneous interplay. That tune contrasts sharply with the shimmering, delicate “Icicles,” highlighted by Helias’ moving lyricism, eventually consumed by the tune’s surging roar.
Knuffke makes his first appearance on the zigzagging “Submission,” while “Golem” offers a round of broad-shouldered, barrelhouse swing. “Bleeding Heart” is remarkably hushed and intimate, the album’s quietest, most delicate moment despite building with nervous intensity. “Night Wrestler” is bright and buoyant, “Climb To the Top” barbed and dissonant.” Knuffke returns to provide darting, keen-edged lines on “Hidden Glances,” while “Scatterbrain Suite” offers a slapstick soundtrack for an imaginary silent film.
Caine’s playing on “He Said She” sparkles with classical elegance and hymn-like simplicity, while “Sticks and Stones” dances with brisk soulfulness. Helias’ tense, scraping bowed bass pairs with Penn’s jittery rhythms to give “Time in Between” its frenetic urgency, while “Shadow of a Doubt” kicks off with an odd-angled dialogue between Caine and Knuffke. “Downward Spiral” brings the album to a close with a nimble, circling figures that draw an aural picture of the title.
“I wanted to include all these different styles of playing trio,” Caine says of Calibrated Thickness. Despite being a more traditional setting than many of the pianist’s projects – his eccentric, style-smashing reimaginings of classical repertoire come immediately to mind – the piano trio offers no less opportunity for Caine to show off his broad-spectrum tastes and approaches.
From his early days backing soul-jazz horn players in Philly nightclubs through his convention-defying work with Downtown New York avant-gardists and adventurous classical ensembles to his always-surprising catalogue as a leader, all facets of Caine’s diverse artistry are contained herein.
For Gene, a serious musical journey is always undertaken against the backdrop of the theater of the absurd, whether the musician knows it or not; in it, the quest for meaning is replaced by contentment in the artistic pursuit of beauty.
For Gene, a serious musical journey is always undertaken against the backdrop of the theater of the absurd, whether the musician knows it or not; in it, the quest for meaning is replaced by contentment in the artistic pursuit of beauty. In the tradition of aesthetics, the profound power of beauty saves us from our own despair. In the Japanese bushido way, the pursuit for unattainable beauty and perfection brings balance to life.
Seeking his own expression of beauty, Gene was joined by kindred hearts and minds. He says, “A great team of musicians came through for the music. I think in this third record together, this is the best work for Thana Alexa and me as Fractal Attraction’s frontline. Our collaboration has grown tighter over the years, as she has gotten to know my music.Cuban pianist, Manuel Valera did a great job. It was my first time working with him. Yasushi Nakamura is one of the best bass players I’ve heard. And of course, Clarence Penn is one of the best drummers in the international jazz scene.”
CD DESCRIPTION
By Travis Rogers
What they have created together, in their own musical heroes’ quest, is a work of sincere expression. The individual movements are magnificent, this is a coherent and wonderful Jazz Opera. Just wonderful.
• Out of the Ashes: the first sound in the album is Thana Alexa’s voice. Gene’s guitar is the sound of resurrection soaring from destruction as Manuel Valera’s piano speaks of reconstruction. It is the rapprochement with life in the absence of meaning.
• Circe's Compassion: Circe, the devastatingly beautiful goddess-enchantress, eventually helps Odysseus after her defeat to him. It is the compassion of friends and foes that guides Odysseus through his journey.
• Jade Stones: Jade, the “blessing stone,” offers benefits to whatever it touches. It has been used as a sacrifice to nature gods and even carved into musical instruments. Jade also symbolizes the wisdom gathered from a peaceful life, allowing us to see ourselves as we really are.
• Kunai: Originally, kunai were farming tools that were soon transformed into weapons. It is most known as weapon of choice for the Japanese Ninjas and Shinobis. A defensive weapon rather than offensive, here the music defends the musicians moving forward into the Gate.
• Torii: A torii is a traditional gate into a Shinto shrine, the portal from to the sacred from the profane. Passing through the torii, however, does not change the view, as it is an open archway, making the difference between the spiritual and the material worlds at best an illusion and, at worst, a lie.
• Forkball (for Ornette): A marvelous elegy and tribute to the life and work of Ornette Coleman, who may have understood these things better than any of us.
• Déjala Que Pase: As a product of Gene spending extended periods in Spain, more recently in San Jose, he has fallen under the influence of Spanish music. Let things pass. It is the moment of realization, no longer looking for an answer.
• Upward and Onward!: After recognition, Gene forsakes the options of escaping existence and leap of faith. Instead, in the most amazing choice of all, he chooses beauty. This is Aristotle’s ascent.
Hope and meaning may be beyond our reach. Stop and hear Gene, Thana, Manuel, Yasushi, and Clarence, making absurdity lose its sting to the sheer joy of beautiful music.
Track Names and Times and Composer:
1. Out of the Ashes 9:45 Gene Ess
2. Circe’s Compassion 8:35 Gene Ess
3. Jade Stones 5:52 music by Gene Ess, lyrics by Thana Alexa
4. Kunai 5:49 Gene Ess
5. Torii (The Gate) 8:58 Gene Ess
6. Forkball 5:03 Gene Ess
7. Déjala Que Pase 6:37 music Gene Ess, lyrics Thana Alexa
