Dave Liebman - John Coltrane’s Meditations (January 2022 Arkadia Records)

“…the music is simply terrific. Water is Liebman’s first recording with Metheny, and it’s a solid combination… if he just keeps making records as engaging as this one, that’ll be libation enough: a tall glass of water.”

– Downbeat Magazine

20-time Grammy Award winner Pat Metheny plays alongside saxophone virtuoso David Liebman as he leads this remarkable quartet, that includes Jazz architects Cecil McBee and Billy Hart, as they examine the expansive and elusive nature of the primordial element, Water. From impressionistic ballads to tsunamis of sound, David Liebman’s Arkadia Records album, The Elements: Water is probably the most ambitious project of Liebman’s career.

“Here’s a Jazz concept album that actually works quite well… The combination of Liebman and Metheny is particularly strong, ranging from soft, ethnic-sounding passages to roaring avant-garde explosiveness – a potent reminder that there is far more to Jazz in the ‘90s than the more frequently heard, retro examinations of the past.”

– Don Heckman, Los Angeles Times

“They produce a greater variety of timbres and textures than most quartets due to Liebman doubling on tenor and soprano sax and wood flute and Metheny employing several guitars: acoustic, electric, guitar synth, and Pikasso guitar. Each group member plays impressively. Liebman has a bright, attractive soprano sound and displays considerable rhythmic grace when playing the instrument. On tenor he’s powerful; his solid full lower register work deserves special attention. And what a nice, big flute sound he produces.”

– Harvey Pekar, JazzTimes Magazine

Teaming up with guitar prodigy Pat Metheny, reedist David Liebman, who plays tenor saxophone, soprano sax, and wood flute, explores through music the various aspects and facets of water, giver of life and refresher of souls. The combination of Liebman and Metheny on this album is stunning. While the Arkadia Records album, Dave Liebman: The Elements: Water, leans towards Jazz’s less traditional sensibilities, it also contains an earthy quality that connects it to the sounds of nature, and in doing so creates an organic yet contemporary album that’s both accessible and inventive. 

1. Introduction 00:52

2. The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost 13:44

3. Compassion 10:55

4. Love 12:24

5. Consequences 07:35

6. Serenity 09:24

Composed by John Coltrane

Transcriptions by Caris Visentin

David Liebman: Tenor sax

Vic Juris: Guitar

Jamey Haddad: Drums and percussion

Phil Markowitz: Piano and synth

Tony Marino: Bass

With Special Guests:

Billy Hart: Drums

Cecil McBee: Bass

Tiger Okoshi: Trumpet

Caris Visentin: Oboe

PRE-ORDER

David Liebman Group - New Vista (December 2021 Arkadia Records)

“Critics’ Picks – Top 5 Recording of the year.” – JazzTimes, Chuck Berg and Bret Primack

Arkadia Records recording artist, jazz soprano sax virtuoso Dave Liebman, together with his group and the great Brazilian percussionist Café, breaks new ground in this inspired album, entitled “David Liebman: New Vista”. Mixing Brazilian rhythms with penetrating ballads such as “Estaté”, “Beauty and the Beast”, and “Zingaro (Portrait in Black and White)”, this recording is, in the innovative Liebman’s words, his “most upbeat release to date.”

“His effervescent “New Vista”… reflecting the music of Brazil, Liebman sounds unusually comfortable and relaxed, as his fluid, cleanly articulated soprano lines dart, weave and flutter through the shifting grooves… Liebman displays a marvelous lyrical facility, bringing a beautiful, somewhat breathy tone to the seductive rhythms and intoxicating melodies. He adds tremendous warmth and feeling to these tunes… It’s hard to recall a Liebman project as buoyant and immediately appealing as New Vista.” – Downbeat, Jon Andrews

David Liebman’s New Vista is an extraordinary adventure. That, though, is what we have come to expect from Liebman, one of contemporary music’s true innovators. Although having just passed the half century mark, Lieb is playing with an intensity pulsing with youthful energies.

“At the same time, his playing possesses a Solomon-like wisdom. On one level, there’s a brilliant reconfiguring of the past, of Dave’s own considerable legacy, as well as those of Miles (Davis) and Trane (John Coltrane). And yet the music springs from the immediacy of the moment. So while imbued with the spirits of the giants, Dave’s impassioned quests once again push past the present and into the future.

In the aptly titled “New Vista”, arguably Dave’s most assessable project to date, the inspiration comes in large part from Brazil. This, though, is not the Bossa Nova of your father – or mother. Indeed, it’s an electro-Amazonian voyage into an exotic and rhythmically charged neo-musical hyperspace, a magical realm in which myth and dream dance with joyous abandon.

I have no doubt that New Vista will stand as a landmark in Liebman’s already distinguished career. Its appeals are many. Its impact is immediate. Indeed, it’s serious and joyous fun at the summit by one of our great contemporary artists, saxophone extrodinaire, Dave Liebman.” – Dr. Chuck Berg

“Liebman has evolved a persuasively personal voice and a spare approach that not only focuses on the choice notes but the choice timbre to set them off.” – Gary Giddins, The Village Voice

Most well known as a key member of the seminal Miles Davis Quintet in the 1970s, Dave Liebman, along with notable musicians Phil Markowitz, Tony Marino, Jamey Haddad, Vic Juris, and Brazilian percussion master Café, creates this thrilling CD, “David Liebman: New Vista” that fuses Jazz with Brazilian influences; culminating in an exhilarating recording of Dave Liebman’s individual musical vision. 

1. New Vista 06:47

2. Estaté 05:18

3. Real Dreams 07:06

4. So Far, So Close 05:23

5. Christmas Socks 06:03

6. Beauty and the Beast 05:29

7. Jungle Glide 07:00

8. Zingaro (Portrait in Black and White) 05:52

9. The Gross Man 05:58

David Liebman: Soprano sax and tenor sax

Vic Juris: Guitar

Phil Markowitz: Piano and synth

Tony Marino: Bass

Jamey Haddad: Drums and percussion

Café: Percussion

Produced by: Bob Karcy

PRE ORDER

the Jamie Baum Septet + / Bridges (SUNNYSIDE RECORDS May 18, 2018)

Hailed by Downbeat for her “remarkable artistic facility” and by The New York Times for her “remarkable balance of fluidity and restless creativity,” New York-based flutist/composer and 2014 Guggenheim Fellow Jamie Baum is proud to announce the release of her sixth CD as a leader, Bridges, featuring The Jamie Baum Septet+. The highly anticipated follow-up to her 2013 recording In This Life, Bridges offers yet another recording of incredible depth, beauty, spirituality, undiluted zeal and is the culmination of Baum’s search for common links between some of the world’s great religious music traditions. While conducting research for her Guggenheim Fellowship Award, Baum explains, “I found there to be very deep connections going back centuries, between certain types of Jewish music (my earliest musical influences), and Muslim/Arabic and Hindu/South Asian music.” Exploring these musical connections, and composing new music inspired by her findings, became the focus of Bridges. 

Baum’s advanced harmonic sensibility and sonic imagination, beautifully brought to life by the stellar members of her long-running ensemble, proves yet again the capacity of modern jazz to absorb and transform music of diverse traditions, without sacrificing the improvisatory element at the core of jazz’s identity. In her album notes Baum cites Wikipedia’s definition of the word “bridge,” one that seems to sum up her artistic mission here: “a structure built to span physical obstacles without closing the way underneath.” At the same time, Baum’s musical wanderings highlight something even deeper: our shared humanity, and the common threads that run throughout our history. 

With great respect for these varied traditions and their vast languages, Baum’s goal was not to play or compose exactly in these styles, but to have her travels and playing experiences inspire new ways of writing and improvising. The diverse musicians who make up the Jamie Baum Septet+ are all first-call artists on the jazz scene, many of them accomplished leaders in their own right. Their presence gives Baum limitless compositional freedom and inspiration: “Having specific players to write for is a bandleader/composer’s dream and offers an incredible opportunity for experimentation and growth,” she says. We hear this borne out in the lyrical melodies, intricate contrapuntal passages and complex rhythmic ideas at the heart of Bridges, and in the textural warmth and surprise of Sam Sadigursky’s alto sax and bass clarinet, Brad Shepik’s guitar, Amir ElSaffar’s trumpet and voice, John Escreet’s dazzlingly virtuosic piano and of course Baum’s compelling improvisations on flute and alto flute throughout the album. 

Baum’s fascination with world sacred music traditions stemmed from her love of South Asian music and in particular for Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Pakistan’s late Qawwali vocal master. Her previous album In This Life was inspired by Khan’s legacy, because she “found in him what I have found in those musicians who have touched me, like Coltrane, Miles and Pavarotti…a truly gifted, deeply spiritual and soulful artist,” Baum writes in her album notes. Expanding her focus from Qawwali outward to other forms of religious music, Baum arrived at the focus of Bridges. 

Khan’s influence is also felt on “Joyful Lament,” derived from a melody of Khan’s called “Lament,” Baum explains. This piece was arranged with Shepik’s guitar in mind, and “his solo certainly exceeds anything I could have imagined,” Baum enthuses. 

In addition to her study of Khan, Baum’s travels to India and especially Jazzmandu, the Kathmandu Jazz Festival, in 2003 and again in 2009, widened her musical horizons immeasurably. The three-movement “Honoring Nepal: The Shiva Suite,” a centerpiece of Bridges, represents Baum’s wish to give back to a community that has given her so much. The piece was commissioned by the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art in New York. “It was difficult to watch the pain and destruction the 2015 earthquake caused to the beautiful people and historic sites in Nepal, including musicians I knew and places I’d been,” Baum writes. “I knew I wanted to highlight and pay tribute in some way to this event and found inspiration in a painting of Shiva … a pan-Hindu deity revered widely by Hindus in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Shiva is the ‘destroyer of evil and the transformer’ within the Trimurti, the Hindu trinity that includes Brahma and Vishnu. Shiva is the Supreme Being who creates, protects and transforms the universe. Completely contradictory aspects of life have been built into the personality of Shiva…. A particular ‘thank you’ to my rhythm section [Escreet, bassist Zack Lober and drummer Jeff Hirshfield] for their drive, sensitivity and expertise in navigating and highlighting the changing colors, dynamics and intensity, giving so much meaning to the arc and intent of this suite!” 

The Nepali influence emerges again on “Mantra,” arranged by Baum with Nepali musician Navin Chettri, who plays tanpura and sings on the track. The tune is based on Mahamrityunjaya Mantra “meant for healing, rejuvenation and nurturance,” Baum writes. “According to Shiva Purana when you have fear of any unknown event this chant helps you to overcome the fear. The Shiva Purana is the highest science of elevating human nature to the very peak of consciousness, expressed in the form of very beautiful stories.” 

“From the Well” opens the album with the sound of a scale “common to Maqam, Jewish and South Asian music,” writes Baum. “Song Without Words,” a tribute to Baum’s late father, highlights the composer’s Jewish influence — in particular the Kol Nidre prayer so central to the holiday of Yom Kippur. “There Are No Words,” with its relaxed straight-eighth feel and beautiful chamber-like interplay within the ensemble, revisits the theme of loss as well. And the closing track, “Ucross Me,” was written during Baum’s residency at the UCross Artist Colony in Clearmont, Wyoming in March 2015. It’s a piece “about crossing boundaries and connecting influences,” Baum writes, encapsulating the theme of Bridges as a whole. 

In addition to her Guggenheim Fellowship (an honor she shared the same year with Steve Coleman and Elliott Sharp), Baum was awarded the 2017 New Music USA Project Grant and selected as a 2014-15 Norman Stevens Fellow during her MacDowell Colony residency. Baum’s exemplary career has been built on superlative performances in the studio and on stages around the world, alongside a long list of renowned jazz artists including Randy Brecker, Mick Goodrick, Tom Harrell, Dave Douglas, Fred Hersch, Uri Caine, Ralph Alessi, David Binney, Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith and many others.

She has placed in the DownBeat Critics’ Polls annually since 1998 and has been nominated by the Jazz Journalists Association as “Flutist of the Year” eight times; the Jamie Baum Septet+ was nominated in 2014 as “Best Midsize Ensemble of the Year” in the same category as the Wayne Shorter Quartet and Steve Coleman’s Five Elements. She has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, International Jazz Composers Alliance, Meet the Composer, Chamber Music America and the American Music Center. Her playing credits include tours as a State Dept./Kennedy Center Jazz Ambassador, in 1999 to South America and in 2002 to India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Thailand and Bangladesh. Baum has served on the faculty of the jazz department at Manhattan School of Music since 2007 and on the adjunct faculty roster at the New School University since 2004. Altus Flutes/KHS America has sponsored her innovative clinic “A Fear-Free Approach to Improvisation for the Classically Trained Musician”™ at colleges, conservatories, festivals, flute clubs and “music and art” schools worldwide since 1993.

1. From The Well

2. Song Without Words (for S. James Baum)

3. There Are No Words 05:59

4. Honoring Nepal: The Shiva Suite Part 1 - The Earthquake

5. Honoring Nepal: The Shiva Suite Part 2 - Renewal

6. Honoring Nepal: The Shiva Suite Part 3 - Contemplation

7. Joyful Lament

8. Mantra

9. UCross Me

Jamie Baum - flutes, singing bowl

Amir ElSaffar - trumpet, vocals

Sam Sadigursky - alto sax, bass clarinet

Chris Komer - French horn

Brad Shepik -guitar

John Escreet - piano

Zack Lober - bass, singing bowl

Jeff Hirschfeld - drums

Jamey Haddad - percussion (Bridges)

Navin Chettri - percussion, vocals (Bridges)