TIGUE - Strange Paradise (NEW AMSTERDAM RECORDS April 27, 2018)

Strange Paradise is the sophomore album from Brooklyn-based composer-performer trio Tigue, following the group's widely celebrated debut album Peaks (2015). 

Tigue is a group of three percussionists with a fluid musical identity. Praised for their energetic and focused performances, the members of Tigue (Matt Evans, Amy Garapic and Carson Moody) have played together since they were practically children — continuously making their own blend of instrumental minimalism while simultaneously performing in collaborative projects. Strange Paradise sees them building worlds as a unit, pushing each other to transcend the limits and expectations of their percussion instrumentation in the construction of long-form, radiant hypnotic soundscapes the group describes as “rendered in ecstatic complexity.” 

The music on Strange Paradise flows directly from the hands and minds of the members, the result of a deep human connection that can only come from playing music together nearly a decade. The group wrote the music with a sense of immediacy — everyone together in a room, with vibraphones, drums, synthesizers, gongs and garbage — with every sound maintaining an intimate connection to its creator. The members’ distinct musical voices interlock seamlessly, and the pieces radiate with warmth. 

As a result, Strange Paradise is a luminous, abstract, non-narrative world that funnels inspiration from patterns, objects, and relationships. Built on an intricate patchwork of tones where instrumental lines and textures shift in and out of alignment to produce a vibrating landscape, Strange Paradise is designed for a mode of “extended listening” — asking listeners to explore slow gradations of change between rhythm and texture. The album creates a sound environment that envelopes the listener but continually defies expectation — shapeshifting at each point it seems understood. Though the music floats from the serene to the uncanny, Strange Paradise is perhaps most notable for providing a distinct sensation of interconnectedness. 

1. Triangle

2. Contrails

3. Quilts

Matt Evans

Amy Garapic

Carson Moody

Invisible Anatomy - Dissections (NEW AMSTERDAM RECORDS 2018)

Incorporating elements from classical, jazz, experimental rock, performance art and theater, Invisible Anatomy creates performances that combine an omnivorous stylistic palate, virtuosic physicality, and dramatic visual presentation. Dissections is an album of works that premiered at National Sawdust in 2016, featuring six works created by the group's members from a collaboratively generated text and numerous workshops. 

Dissections explores intimacy and the potentially damaging experience of being vulnerable with others, but also the beautiful and unexpected results that can happen when that risk is taken. The close-knit group has experienced this first-hand, collectively and individually working through health issues, conflict, distance and more, and baring themselves to each other during the process. The pieces on Dissections reflect the deconstruction and reconstruction inherent in peeling away human surfaces. 

Each piece on Dissections fixates on one element of a musical phrase or text, repeating — or dissecting — it until it becomes unrecognizable. Vocalist Fay Wang's piece "Facial Polygraph XVIA" is a poetic study of facial expressions, dissecting tics, "tells," and subtle changes of emotions. Guitarist Brendon Randall- Myers's songs "Permission" and "Othering" focus explicitly on the discomfort and dangers of opening up to someone — navigating difference and similarity, and the disconnect between who we imagine people to be and who they actually are. Musically, the pieces attempt to capture a feeling of beautiful discomfort in being pulled apart, splitting rock-derived phrases across multiple instruments playing at different tempos. 

Cellist Ian Gottlieb’s two-movement piece, "Threading Light", symbolizes the piano as flesh and the cello, guitar and vibraphone as the knife, teasing strands of notes out of decadent chords. Pianist Paul Kerekes's piece "Pressing Issues" explores the constant shuffling of small musical gestures into a kaleidoscopic listening experience. 

Pianist Dan Schlosberg’s piece "A Demonstration" is inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s relentless examinations of human cadavers in search of the human soul, exploring every facet of man he could think of along the way. Fittingly, the pieces features players coaxing sounds from the strings of a grand piano through inflictions from screwdrivers and knives, in a sense exploring a familiar body in new ways. 

1. Facial Polygraph XVIA 10:21

2. Permission 04:15

3. Threading Light (i) 04:48

4. Pressing Issues 05:19

5. Threading Light (ii) 03:29

6. Othering 06:32

7. A Demonstration I - the cause 02:58

8. A Demonstration II - where the soul is 04:52

Invisible Anatomy is:

Ian Gottlieb, cello

Paul Kerekes, piano/keyboards

Brendon Randall-Myers, guitars

Daniel Schlosberg, piano/keyboards

Benjamin Wallace, percussion

Fay Wang, vocals

Subtle Degrees - A Dance That Empties (NEW AMSTERDAM RECORDS February 23, 2018)

A Dance That Empties is Travis Laplante's latest album-length composition, written for Subtle Degrees, a new two-musician ensemble consisting of Laplante (tenor saxophone) and Gerald Cleaver (drums). The duo's uncategorizable sound evokes everything from contemporary classical music, avant garde jazz, minimalism, technical metal, and sacred world music. Laplante is also the founder/composer of saxophone quartet Battle Trance and the ensemble Little Women. 

A Dance That Empties is an extremely demanding composition that pushes the players to the limit both technically and physically, while the raw, vulnerable instrumentation makes for an intimately emotional experience for both performers and listeners. 

A Dance That Empties is the culmination of a very long musical relationship. In 2001, when he was only 18 years old, Laplante played a concert at New York’s Knitting Factory, then a pre-eminent mecca for adventurous music of all kinds. Cleaver was in the audience, and came up to Laplante afterwards, handed him his phone number and said they should play together sometime. They soon did, “and I felt a very intimate and spiritual connection with Gerald that feels more alive than ever today,” Laplante says. “I’ve learned a tremendous amount from Gerald and have long considered him one of my favorite living improvisers.” 

The two have performed together various times over the ensuing 17 years, but Laplante never felt he was quite ready to record with Cleaver. “It got to the point where I took a multiple-year break from playing with him because I felt like I didn’t have enough to bring to the table,” says Laplante. “I needed to practice so I could have more to give to our musical relationship.” Then, in the fall of 2016, Laplante received a commission to compose a piece to be performed at Roulette in Brooklyn the following spring. “I knew that this was the perfect opportunity to return to this relationship with Gerald.” And so Laplante began composing an epic-scale work work with Cleaver’s rhythmic virtuosity in mind. 

Inspired by the longer durational forms of spiritual ceremonies, A Dance That Empties is a continuous journey that unfolds over 43 minutes, with musical motifs that foreshadow, recur, and evolve. The piece refines sonic territory that Laplante has pioneered in his celebrated saxophone quartet Battle Trance, as well as his solo saxophone work, utilizing long passages of circular breathing and other extended techniques to create specific and yet ineffable emotional and sonic resonances. A Dance That Empties, as the title implies, adds the distinctly new element of complex rhythmic pulses precisely and expressively executed by Cleaver, that compel listeners to lose themselves in the hypnotically repetitive yet subtly shifting grooves. 

With A Dance That Empties, Laplante and Cleaver throw themselves into unknown territory, delving further into the devotional intensity that has long distinguished both their work.

1. A Dance That Empties I

2. A Dance That Empties II

3. A Dance That Empties III

Composed by Travis Laplante 

Drum arrangements by Gerald Cleaver 

Travis Laplante - tenor saxophone

Gerald Cleaver - drums

John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble - All Can Work (NEW AMSTERDAM RECORDS 2018)

Drummer/composer John Hollenbeck and his 20-piece Large Ensemble will release their third album, All Can Work, January 26 on New Amsterdam Records. The album follows the band’s Grammy-nominated releases A Blessing (2005) and eternal interlude (2009), and pays tribute to the Large Ensemble’s late trumpet player Laurie Frink, a key force in the group and the jazz community. The album title is from an email exchange between Frink and Hollenbeck; the phrase epitomizes the flexible, optimistic resolve that is needed by everyone involved to create a record such as this one. 

After Laurie Frink’s passing, Hollenbeck read all of her emails and compiled them in chronological order, finding poetry and inspiration in her words. Acclaimed vocalist Theo Bleckmann brings Frink’s words to life in the lyrics of the title track “All Can Work." The composition of the piece is based on one of Frink's teaching exercises.

Hollenbeck explains:

“I really sweated this piece because I wanted it to showcase Laurie’s ever-present humor, her dedication to ‘the music,’ and most importantly our love for her. 

Her sudden death stunned the NYC music community - but the legacy she left behind as the trumpet guru/therapist/doctor to countless brass and woodwind players lives on, continuing to support and enhance the community she served. No matter where I am in the world, I can talk to a trumpet player who had studied with or knows her exercises.”

All Can Work represents The John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble’s accumulation of years rehearsing, recording and performing together since its founding in 1998 — the definitive evolution of an exceptional ensemble that has developed a relationship akin to family (some members of which Hollenbeck has been playing with since high school and college). The album also pays tribute to artists who have influenced Hollenbeck most throughout the years: Bob Brookmeyer, Kenny Wheeler, Billy Strayhorn, John Taylor, William Shakespeare, and Piet Mondrian.

The album opens with “lud” — an alluring, hypnotic blend of triumphant horns and angular keys. After the title track comes “Elf”, inspired by composer Billy Strayhorn’s piece of the same name that was retitled and repurposed by Duke Ellington as “Isfahan” for the Far East Suite. Hollenbeck’s version is a near-inverse of the original, featuring soprano saxophonist Tony Malaby playing in an impressively high register. Pulsing horns open on “Heyoke”, Hollenbeck’s tribute to composer/trumpeter and flugelhorn player Kenny Wheeler and jazz pianist John Taylor, featuring Hollenbeck’s arrangements of Wheeler’s original. “This kiss” follows, capturing the spirit of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” by creating a mood of sweet romance in the present with a foreboding dissonance that foreshadows the future.

“From trees” shows Hollenbeck exploring Piet Mondrian’s study of trees in his early works, in particular his unfinished painting "Broadway Boogie-Woogie.” Hollenbeck fittingly incorporates a boogie-woogie feel into the piece while trying to evoke the evolution of the lines of a tree in Mondrian’s earlier paintings to the bold straight black lines in his last. “Long Swing Dream” embodies the first and (so far) only time a piece came to Hollenbeck in an actual dream. Horns pass around a continuous bass line, while Theo Bleckmann voices musings from Cary Grant about Grant's transformative experiences with LSD (the acronym of the song title) deepen the dream-like effect. The album finishes with “The Model” — Hollenbeck’s spirited arrangement of the Kraftwerk original.

All Can Work was recorded by James Farber at Avatar Studios in NYC in June 2017 with assistance from Nate Odden. It was mixed by Brian Montgomery, and mastered by Brent Lambert at Kitchen Mastering. It was produced by John Hollenbeck.

This project was supported in part by the Doris Duke Performing Artists Awards and fiscally sponsored by Arete Living Arts Foundation with funding provided by The Aaron Copland Fund for Music.

Additional large ensemble releases by John Hollenbeck include: Joys and Desires (Jazz Big Band Graz, 2005), Shut Up and Dance (Orchestre National de Jazz, 2010, Grammy-nominated), Songs I Like A Lot (Frankfurt Radio Big Band, 2013, Grammy-nominated) and Songs We Like A Lot (Frankfurt Radio Big Band, 2015).

1. lud

2. All Can Work

3. Elf

4. Heyoke

5. this kiss

6. from trees

7. Long Swing Dream

8. The Model

9. All Can Work (Excerpt)

Ben Kono soprano/alto/tenor sax, flute

Jeremy Viner clarinet, tenor sax

Tony Malaby tenor/soprano sax on 3, 6

Dan Willis tenor sax, clarinet

Anna Webber flute, tenor sax on 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8

Bohdan Hilash clarinet, bass clarinet, bass sax, tubax

Mark Patterson trombone

Mike Christianson trombone

Jacob Garchik trombone, euphonium on 8

Alan Ferber trombone on 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Jeff Nelson trombone on 1, 7, 8

Tony Kadleck trumpet, flugelhorn

Jon Owens trumpet, flugelhorn

Dave Ballou trumpet, flugelhorn

Matt Holman trumpet, flugelhorn

Chris Tordini acoustic, electric bass

Matt Mitchell piano, organ, keyboard

Patricia Brennan vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel

John Hollenbeck drums, composition

Theo Bleckmann voice

JC Sanford conductor