Jeff Pearring - Pearring Sound Socially Distanced Duos (2021)

UPCOMING LIVE APPEARANCES

Wednesday, September 29th 8pm

Pearring Sound

Appearing

at

Soapbox Gallery

636 Dean St

Brooklyn, NY 11238 

Pearring Sound

Jeff Pearring, alto sax

Ron Horton, trumpet

Russ Lossing, piano

Adam Lane, bass

Billy Mintz, drums

This event can also be live-streamed up to 72 hours after the performance.

During the last part of the COVID era, altoist Jeff Pearring offers a set of duets that, while socially distanced, feature close communication with a variety of fellow greats

Musicians Names + Instruments: Billy Mintz, drums 1,2, Cameron Brown, bass 5,6, Claire de Brunner, bassoon 3, Daniel Carter, soprano saxophone 7, Francisco Mela, drums 8, Ken Filiano, bass 4, Jeff Pearring, alto saxophone all tracks

2020 was an extremely difficult year for all musicians but some took advantage of the extreme limitations to express themselves in unique ways. Alto-saxophonist Jeff Pearring, who under the group name of “Pearring Sound” normally leads units ranging from trios to a quintet, wanted to interact with other inventive musicians but in a safe manner. He decided to play duets with six diverse but very talented musical partners, resulting in the eight selections that comprise Pearring Sound Socially Distanced Duos.

 

“Twisting Pavement,” the first of two duets with Billy Mintz (leader of the ten-piece Two Bass Band and a drummer who has had important associations with the likes of Mike Garson, Vinny Golia, Bill Mays, Charles Lloyd, and Alan Broadbent among countless others), begins with Mintz setting the mood before Pearring constructs a melodic and rhythmic improvisation. They also team up together on “Time In Isolation,” a relaxed jazz waltz that serves as a showcase for the altoist.

 

Alto-bassoon duets are not exactly common, but there are few improvising bassoonists with the abilities of Claire de Brunner who studied with Lee Konitz and Connie Crothers and has worked with some of the most adventurous musicians in the New York area. On “Shapeshifter,” she is very much an equal partner with Pearring as they inspire each other during their passionate encounter. Ken Filiano has been an important bassist since the 1980s, working with Vinny Golia, Anthony Braxton and the who’s who of the avant-garde, appearing on over 150 albums. He pushes Pearring throughout “A Continuous Conversation Renewed,” coming up with a nonstop flow of creative ideas while swinging throughout. Bassist Cameron Brown worked extensively with Sheila Jordan, the Don Pullen/George Adams Quartet, Archie Shepp. and Dewey Redman. He performs Miles Davis’ “Solar” and the playful “No, We Don’t” with Pearring, playing subtle and inventive lines. Saxophonist Daniel Carter, who has had important associations with William Parker and Matthew Shipp and has led at least 50 albums of his own, plays soprano-sax on “Present Value Impact, the Gift,” a pretty ballad that features the two horns spontaneously harmonizing with each other. Francisco Mela has played drums with an endless number of top artists from the jazz and Latin music worlds including Joe Lovano, McCoy Tyner, and Chucho Valdes. He teams up with Jeff Pearring on the set’s final duet, “Extempore Arquitectura,” an episodic musical adventure that begins with quite a bit of fire before becoming lyrical and wistful. 

 

Jeff Pearring was born in Colorado, started on the alto saxophone when he was ten, and had a career in economics before switching to music. He worked early on in classical music, ska and reggae, but turned towards jazz, studying with the late pianist-educator Connie Crothers, one of his mentors. With his constantly evolving Pearring Sound, the altoist recorded What Had Happened in 2016 (featuring electric bassist Adam Lane and drummer Flin van Hemmen), 2018’s True Story (Connie Crothers’ last recording which also includes Ken Filiano and drummer Carlo Costa), and Nothing But Time (2019) with bassist Lane and drummer Tim Ford.

 

Socially Distanced Duos is the most unusual of the Pearring Sound recordings but is quite timely and features Jeff Pearring in top form as the COVID era finally begins to end.

1. Twisting Pavement 6:45 

2. Time in Isolation 8:45 

3. Shapeshifter 4:42 

4. A Continuous Conversation Renewed 5:32 

5. Solar 3:12 (Miles Davis) 

6. No, We Don’t 3:11 

7. Present Value Impact, the Gift 3:55 

8. Extempore Arquitectura 5:49

All tracks composed by Pearring Sound except where noted

AVAILABLE FROM: Amazon, Apple Music, CD baby, all streaming services

The Zone - The Zone (July 3, 2021 STUDIO III RECORDINGS)

The Zone is a concept album written by Italian composer Daniele Del Monaco for a band of performers fom New York City who are usually affiliated with avant-jazz and free improvisation.

Through the interaction of the five musicians, guided by Del Monaco’s experimental sensibility on keys and sound generators, this recording turns out a unique and ambitious combination of Fay Victor’s urban jazz vocals, Marco Cappelli’s guitar, combining elements of classical music and free improvisation, the at times extreme dynamics of Satoshi Takeishi’s performance on the drums, and the virtuosity of bassist Ken Filiano.

Del Monaco’s radical approach to creating music is rooted in a slow process of working through a score with classical musicians and free improvisers, balancing meticulous compositions with the setting of parameters for free improvisation.

In his lyrics, Del Monaco appropriates the words of Persian poet and mystic Farid al-Din‘Attar’s epic ‘The Conference of the Birds’ and Andrei Tarkovsky’s ‘Stalker’ to create a narrative in which the ideas and imagery of poets and philosophers interact. Byron, Keats, Diogenes, Thoreau and Buddha all meet within the framework of ‘Attar’s journey in search of truth and the Stalker’s journey through ‘The Zone’. The search for the mythical room within is capable of granting a person their innermost desires. The result is a set of seven songs filled with allusive and symbolic imagery, exploring the relationship between beauty and possession.

The majority of the album was recorded between 2018 and 2019 by Alessandro Benedetti in Rome, Italy. Benedetti tragically passed away before the sessions were finished, at which point Martin Bisi in Brooklyn, NY took over the recording work. The album’s journey then continued on to Sheffield UK, where it was completed and mixed by producer Thomas Lebioda for Studio III Recordings in 2020.

Throughout its development, a number of guest musicians have accompanied Del Monaco for live performances of The Zone: Blixa Bargeld, Theodosii Spassov and Marco Ariano joined the LCP Percussion Quintet in October 2014 for a first performance at Centro Campania in Caserta, IT. In November 2018, Marc Ribot joined the Band for a rendition at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, IT, organised and produced by RomaEuropa festival. 

1. A Loud Noise 11:05

2. Look At The Stalker 07:16

3. Into The Zone 05:28

4. We Are Lost 05:01

5. Seven Valleys 12:08

6. What Am I Doing Here 06:55

7. The Room 09:35

recorded by Alessandro Benedetti at Loadistrict, Rome, Italy

and by Martin Bisi at BC Studio, Brooklyn, NY

mixed by Thomas Lebioda at The Laundry Rooms, Sheffield, UK

mastered by Karsten Deutschmann at Gentle Art, Hamburg, Germany

lacquers cut by Noel Summerville, London UK

Pre-order

Biggi Vinkeloe / Barre Phillips / Ken Filiano / Peeter Uuskyla - The Forgotten Song (April 2021)

"What I can recall is that the extra double bass did not distract from Biggi’s usual tasteful use of space. There was also a buoyancy that is also present in this quartet that took the music into different realms." - Russell Summers, who was at the concert.

When Bill Dixon said each person is their own orchestra, it took me a bit to get my head around what he meant.

The access to so many timbres and registers the contemporary improviser has can be used to make space in the music without the use of silence. An improviser can re-orchestrate themselves in the moment thereby leaving an open space where they were before. The traditional concept of the drum set always had this extreme register change in it, which is why drummers like Peeter Uuskyla can access this idea with no problem.

It also explains why the addition of Ken Filiano opens up the trio futher rather than adding density. Both bassists work on each side of an imaginary "bass part", Alan Silva once talked about the bass being able to cover the full range of the string family, it always seemed to be that in a small "jazz group" format, we bassists role was actually the string section and not just the low end. Of course, each of these traditional ideas has all the abstractions of the various movements within improvised music piled on and around them.

Anyone interested in this will know the history of Barre and Ken and their vital importance to the instrument, so I won't recount it all here. While I have played with Ken and taken lessons from both bassists, Biggi has been an important comrade in the music for me for years. If I had to pick one insight in her playing, it would be the ability to find pitch and melodic material in the most complex timbre combinations. She might be working with pitch, but it is not imposed or expected that her fellow improvisers do the same, it is similar to the way diverse pianists like Cecil Taylor, Georg Graewe, Fred Van Hove & John Tilbury are able to work in harmonic material from the keyboard into similarly texturally complex situations without having to get under the hood of the piano.

I think this gets back to an interesting concept in improvised music guitarist Sandy Ewen calls real vs. imagined sounds: The improviser tends to play "real" sounds based on exactly what they are as opposed to an imagined ideal. Pitch comes into play as well, a pitch played by one of the basses might be a harmony with a non-tempered pitch from drum set. You end up with a multidimensional tuning system that ultimately bridges the overtone series to western tempered tuning with many stops along the way! Damon Smith, St. Louis, MO

1. I Ere 12:40

2. II Saphéne 05:10

3. III Ode 25:29

4. IV Hoca 11:11

5. V Ithos 07:17

Live board recording (2-track DAT-cassette) by Simon Garber at Vancouver International Jazz Festival, Canada on July 1, 1999

Edit, transfer and mastering made in May, 2020 at Studio Fabriken, Gothenburg, Sweden.

Alto saxophone and flute: Biggi Vinkeloe

Double bass: Barre Phillips

Double bass: Ken Filiano

Drums: Peeter Uuskyla

Transfer, edit and mastering: Peeter Uuskyla and Michael Thorén

Pre-order

Jason Mears Quartet - Ammonite (October 2018)

JASON MEARS, from Alaska, is a saxophonist, clarinetist, composer, improviser, and educator who is currently living in New York City. As well as being a member of the the highly acclaimed Empty Cage Quartet, Jason’s most recent projects include Anthony Braxton’s Trillium E Orchestra, Wadada Leo Smith’s Silver Orchestra, and Harris Eisenstadt’s Canada Day Octet.

Jason Mears: Sopranino, Alto, and Baritone Saxophones

Quentin Tolimieri: Electric Piano

Ken Filiano: Bass

Andrew Drury: Drumset, Percussion

Recorded, Mixed, and Mastered by Jim Clouse at Park West Studios, Brooklyn, New York

1. Splitting Apart 18:31

2. Grace 16:30

3. The Cauldron 15:19

Jason Kao Hwang - Blood (October 22, 2018)

Blood by Jason Kao Hwang and his Burning Bridge ensemble represents the latest masterwork to date in the oeuvre of one of the jazz avant-garde’s most original compositional voices: an uncompromising artistic vision as captivating as it is challenging. Hwang succeeds here at incorporating improvisational statements into unified compositional schemes with what strikes me as a cinematic, directorial style, an engaging conception of sonic cinéma vérité. His mastery of musical mise-en-scène allows him to place his outstanding cast of artists within well-structured soundscapes, across which he pans with lyrical lines and propulsive rhythms that his soloists continue seamlessly, as he zooms in to foreground their candid improvised responses to the challenging situations in which they find themselves. 

The compositional stage-sets he conceives showcase an activist aesthetic of polycultural hybridity, in which uniquely orchestrated sounds combine to evoke overtones of his own Asian American history and location. Building upon Burning Bridge’s acclaimed debut recording (2012, Innova), he brings experimental jazz styles into mutually enriching dialogue with traditional Chinese music in order to confront, contemplate, and counteract the unspeakable violence whose disturbing, unrelenting echoes engendered this piece. 

He explores this harrowing theme across some 28 painstakingly staged scenes, comprising a continuous play of sound divided into five acts. The first act begins and ends with the reverberations of distant bass explosions with flying treble debris, in between which ensemble lines guide brass soloists through unfolding ritual contexts, and freeze-frame sustained tones launch duos or trios into intense dialogue; collective improvisations flow seamlessly into individual statements, which in turn give way to lyrical contrapuntal melodies before returning again to ensemble extemporization.

The second act opens with a mournful ceremonial procession that suddenly transforms into a bluesy strut over a sinewy rhythm-section groove that carries violin and cornet solos into juxtaposition with subsequent erhu and pipa solos, which lead into a climactic syncopated ensemble passage. The third act returns to the ritualized austerity of the first, with a tuba solo over processional strings, followed by freeze-frame pipa-percussion and trombone-erhu-bass dialogues, flowing into aggressively rhythmic ensemble figures that set off an explosive drum solo, over which a concluding free-rhythm coda ultimately marches off.

The fourth act brings the beat back, with an angular ensemble passage launching a series of bluesy solos over a muscular shuffle groove, which further propels violin-led call-and-response exchanges into collective improvisation that resolves into to a world-weary ensemble reprise; even the funky violin solo and light-hearted string passage that follow cannot prevent the return of repressed, collectively improvised, traumatic memories. The final act expands the first’s reverberating booms and flying debris into bass and tuba solo salvos underscored by string shrapnel, introduced, bridged, and concluded by poignant ensemble prayers for peace. 

The impassioned realization of this ambitious script owes much to the empathetic artistry of the virtuoso ensemble Hwang has assembled and sustained since 2009, with support from Chamber Music America, the Doris Duke Foundation, and U.S. Artists International, as well as performances at Edgefest, the Vision Festival, the Victoriaville Festival de Musique Actuelle, the Chicago World Music Festival, the University of Massachusetts, Flushing Town Hall, Roulette, and the Bop Shop. 

- Scott Currie 

Driving down on an unlit highway, my headlights flashed upon a bleeding deer carcass. My heart rate thundered and lungs exploded as I swerved away, narrowly avoiding a collision. This shock made me reflect upon my mother’s harrowing experiences in China during World War II. While in a Changsha pharmacy she was knocked unconscious by a Japanese bomb. She awoke as the lone survivor surrounded by the dead. I also thought about Butch Morris and Billy Bang, musicians I’ve worked with who fought in Viet Nam. The magnitude of sorrow that they endured is unimaginable. 

Blood meditates upon the emotional traumas of war retained within the body as unspoken vibrations that reverberate throughout communities and across generations. Through Blood the violence of deeply held memories are not relived but transposed into our sound. Blood in our sound rises within our song. 

Extreme danger triggers powerful forces of “fight or flight”. This conflict can produce an immobility response, which penetrates and remains within the body as emotional trauma. Similarly, when a bomb explodes, there is blast wave outward that leaves a near vacuum in its wake. This is filled by an equally deadly blast wind in the opposite direction. Within an explosion, Blood was created.

– Jason Kao Hwan

Jason Kao Hwang (composer, violin)

Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet, flugelhorn)

Joseph Daley (tuba)

Andrew Drury (drum set, concert bass drum and percussion)

Ken Filiano (string bass)

Sun Li (pipa)

Steve Swell (trombone)

Wang Guowei (erhu)

1. Breath Within the Bomb 12:31

2. Surge, Part 1 07:11

3. Surge, Part 2 07:16

4. Evolution 11:12

5. Declarations 09:38

Karl Berger: In A Moment - Music for Piano and Strings (TZADIK 2018)

Founder of the Creative Music Studio and a close collaborator of Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Gato Barbieri, Anthony Braxton and so many more, Karl Berger is a master musician and one of the pioneers of creative music. The third and final CD in his trilogy for Tzadik features fourteen tracks spanning a wide variety of moods. Karl’s gorgeous string arrangements are highlighted here in this beautiful and soulful suite of music for piano and strings.

1. Every Time

2. Slow Motion

3. Sertso

4. Why The Moon Is Blue

5. Not Sure

6. Fragments

7. Mani

8. Possible

9. Allaba

10. D'Accord

11. Down the Road

12. Another Time

13. Where Will We Go From Here?

14. Auto Train

Karl Berger: Piano

Ken Filiano: Bass

Tomas Ulrich: Cello

Gabriel Dresdale: Cello

Jason Hwang: Viola

Sana Nagano: Violin

Larry Packer: Viola