Nate Wooley - Mutual Aid Music (April 16, 2021)

Mutual Aid Has A History

It points to the concept of community action and the human drive to provide succor to our fellow humans. Mutual aid is the primary ethic of an anarchistic utopia in which each knows what they have, is honest about what they need, and is prepared to give and receive accordingly. Every human want is met by a commensurate surplus and all are lifted equally above suffering.

The music on this disc is, to a degree, about this political conception of mutual aid history but, rather than celebrating its primary act of what to give, it concentrates on the decision of how to give it. It asks the musicians to take stock of their gifts and to ask themselves, in each moment, how their use of that gift will affect the community (ensemble) of which they are currently a member. Will their addition provide:

1. A refined musical gesture that simply makes the group sound better

2. A raw idea that opens new sets of possibilities for the other musicians, or

3. The inspiration to others of making the difficult, selfless musical choice.

This set of eight ensemble concertos sprouts from a compositional system that asks musicians to question what they add to the ensemble as human beings first and musicians second. Rather than the traditional aim of faithfully reproducing a score through its mastery, the members of the ensemble are prompted to make decisions that purposely force the music away from facsimile and toward a spontaneity that may feel awkward and uncomfortable. Each supports each in the search for something new and interesting; a music that is not only greater than the compositional whole, but has the potential to recast the way we think about the balance of virtuosity and improvisational spirit in our practice. After all, if we, as an ensemble can enjoy jumping off musical cliffs together within the relative safety of this compositional system, then what’s to stop us from trying to find that same exhilaration in the other music we make?

1. Mutual Aid Music I

2. Mutual Aid Music II

3. Mutual Aid Music III

4. Mutual Aid Music IV

5. Mutual Aid Music I-I

6. Mutual Aid Music II-I

7. Mutual Aid Music III-I

8. Mutual Aid Music IV-I

Nate Wooley - Trumpet

Ingrid Laubrock - Sax

Joshua Modney - Violin

Mariel Roberts - Cello

Sylvie Courvoisier - Piano

Cory Smythe - Piano

Matt Moran - Vibraphone

Russell Greenberg - Vibraphone and Percussion

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Ivo Perelman / Nate Wooley - Polarity (February 2021 Burning Ambulance Music)

Burning Ambulance Music is proud to announce Polarity, a collection of improvised but deeply considered duo encounters between tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman and trumpeter Nate Wooley.

Perelman, a saxophonist, painter and jewelry designer, is as committed to the art and craft of improvisation as anyone alive. Over a 30-year career, he has released more than 100 CDs, building creative relationships with players from all corners of the free music world. His intensity and devotion to spontaneous music-making is virtually without equal, and he has developed a unique and highly recognizable language on the horn, while always remaining open to hearing what his bandmates have to say.

Wooley is an open-eared and innovative improviser, composer, and all-around creative spirit who has worked extensively with Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Ingrid Laubrock, Ken Vandermark, and many others, and has built up a vast and fascinating discography of his own, encompassing everything from solo work to recordings and performances with groups of all sizes.

This is the fifth encounter between Perelman and Wooley, but their first duo recording. They played together with pianist Matthew Shipp on Philosopher’s Stone and with bassist Brandon Lopez and drummer Gerald Cleaver on Octagon, both released in 2017, and reunited for Strings 3 with violist Mat Maneri and Strings 4 with Maneri and Shipp, from 2019.

The ten pieces on Polarity are intimate and beautiful, yet also rigorous and challenging. As Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg writes in the liner notes, “The rewards of their improvising method, their sensitivity and skills are offering us constant variations and extensions of forms, feelings and sounds…Their duo was not planned, but responded to an existential need to create beauty and surprise.”

 1. Four 06:51

2. Two B 03:31

3. Seven A 05:07

4. Three A 03:16

5. Five A 02:55

6. Eight 02:56

7. Two A 02:23

8. One A 01:58

9. Nine Short 01:27

10. Six 10:49

Ivo Perelman - tenor saxophone

Nate Wooley - trumpet

Recorded, mixed and mastered by Jim Clouse at Park West Studios, Brooklyn, NY, February 2020

Album mastered by Marlon Wolterink at White Noise Studios, November 2020

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Nate Wooley – Seven Storey Mountain VI (Pyroclastic Records)

Nate Wooley releases new edition of internationally acclaimed series 

Seven Storey Mountain

“Wooley’s investment [is] in the imaginative and emotional side of an experience that’s both physical and not.” — Justin Cober-Lake, PopMatters 

“The prettiest, most progressive campfire music ever.” — Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times

Genre-defiant trumpet player and composer Nate Wooley brings together artists from seemingly disparate musical communities with the release of Seven Storey Mountain VI on Pyroclastic Records, the sixth iteration of his ecstatic song-cycle.  

In the spirit of creation through energetic confrontation, Wooley engages 14 artists who identify with varied and mingling musical lineages, using their musical histories and strengths as the building blocks of the composition. Seven Storey Mountain features contributions from core collaborators: drummers Chris Corsano, Ryan Sawyer and Ben Hall, and violinists C. Spencer Yeh and Samara Lubelski — all of whom Wooley considers the series’ “nuclear family.” 

“The SSM family has grown over time, but these artists have played on almost every single one,” says Wooley. The album’s extended family comprises lauded pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn; Rhodes players Emily Manzo and Isabelle O’Connor; and electric guitarists Ava Mendoza and Julien Desprez, the latter of whose playing Wooley describes as “kind of like someone threw a machine gun into a blender.” 

This movement of the Seven Storey Mountain song cycle, which began in 2007, is the first completely new version since Seven Storey Mountain V which Wooley recorded in the fall of 2015. In the interim, his ensemble has grown and his composition has developed through multiple performances across Europe, Canada and the United States.

This release also reflects the first version of Seven Storey Mountain that utilizes song material outside of Wooley’s original composition, using the first eight lines of Peggy Seeger’s 1979 song “Reclaim the Night” as a compositional and emotional touchstone throughout the piece. As the album releases from the peak of its ecstatic energy, channeling its momentum into a new resonance, listeners encounter an all-female choir performing an arrangement of Seeger’s anthem by Wooley and singer-composer Megan Schubert, who led the choir and lent her singing and speaking voice to both performance and recording.

Seven Storey Mountain VI premiered live in November, 2019 at Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan to an audience whose members encountered music that rose from almost silent humming to the raw power of the 21-person choir that concludes the piece. The group recorded the next afternoon under the guidance of studio and production master Ron Saint Germain (Bad Brains, Sonic Youth, Ornette Coleman), who captured, preserved and elevated that thrilling energy on the record. “This is the most beautifully reproduced version I’ve ever had of not only the monolithic sound of the ensemble but the ecstatic spirit of the music,” said Wooley.

In a measured act of resistance toward playlist culture that often exalts the digestible single, and in an effort to translate the live experience to tape, Wooley chose to present the entire album as an extended 45-minute track. 

“In performance, the idea behind that has a lot to do with duration,” he says. “You should sit and listen to it, especially in the space where it’s incredibly loud and the sound bounces around. It’s meant to give an ecstatic feeling. And I wanted it to feel full on the record, to flow from one bit to the next.”

As with all Seven Storey Mountain releases, the music culminates in a massive arc of energy when, according to Wooley, the artists are playing at their rawest, most vulnerable states of consciousness. “A lot of the parts can feel aggressive,” he says. “I view all of that as something that is necessary to the production of something new. That feeling of ecstasy has to come from some sort of pressure.” 

Producing a new version of Seven Storey Mountain, so much depends upon new readings of existing work. Wooley integrates samples, melodic loops and essential patterns from past SSM recordings and live performances, stripping down any layers of sound or construction he deems inessential. This compositional process not only serves to connect the music from one SSM to the next but to continue the project’s familial legacy, often including manipulated mixes of past collaborators who may not appear on the current version’s release. 

Another hallmark of the Seven Storey Mountain sound philosophy is the collaborative paradigm Wooley has termed “mutual aid music.” Rather than chart out music for the album in a singular format, he meets his collaborators where they flourish as individuals. Some of his fellow artists prefer chord charts; others prefer to learn music through listening and oral direction; while others feel most comfortable reading meticulously notated orchestral scores. All of his collaborators thrive somewhere on the spectrum between notation and improvisation. 

“Integrating the mutual aid music paradigm is a big deal for me because it goes beyond the piece of music itself,” says Wooley. “It’s a way for communities to come together without everyone having to learn a separate language.” In many ways, communion is key to Seven Storey Mountain VI, from the inclusive composition process to the gathering of “family” musicians; from sharing of the ecstatic experiences to engaging a broader community via Wooley’s album’s royalties donation to the National Council Against Domestic Violence. Through its spirited confrontation comes energetic creation.

At 13, trumpet player and composer Nate Wooley began playing professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist in Clatskanie, Oregon. In 2019, he debuted as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic. Considered one of the leading lights of the American movement to redefine the physical boundaries of the horn, Wooley has gathered international acclaim for his idiosyncratic trumpet language. Since moving to New York in 2001, he has become one of the most in-demand trumpet players in Brooklyn’s intersecting jazz, improvised, noise and new music scenes. He’s performed regularly with John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Eliane Radigue, Annea Lockwood, Ken Vandermark and Yoshi Wada, and premiered works for trumpet by Christian Wolff, Michael Pisaro, Annea Lockwood, Ashley Fure, Wadada Leo Smith, Sarah Hennies and Eva-Maria Houben. In 2016, he received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. Nate currently works as editor-in-chief of their online quarterly journal Sound American.

1. Seven Storey Mountain VI 45:01

Nate Wooley - trumpet and amplifier

Samara Lubelski, C. Spencer Yeh - violins

Chris Corsano, Ben Hall, Ryan Sawyer - drums

Susan Alcorn - pedal steel guitar

Julien Desprez, Ava Mendoza - electric guitars

Isabelle O’Connell, Emily Manzo - keyboards

Yoon Sun Choi, Mellissa Hughes, Megan Schubert - voices

Composed by Nate Wooley

Choral arrangement by Nate Wooley

and Megan Schubert

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INGRID LAUBROCK ANNOUNCES CONTEMPORARY CHAOS PRACTICES ON INTAKT RECORDS (OUT NOVEMBER 16)

CONTEMPORARY CHAOS PRACTICES:

Why does a composer write for orchestra? The amount of time, labor, expense, and struggle involved, not just in composing an orchestral work but in having it accepted, rehearsed, performed, and (in a perfect world) documented, would seem to indicate a Sisyphean chore. Why would anyone invite the risk of pushing that mythic boulder to the mountaintop, only to be flattened by its descent?

“Because it’s there,” the celebrated mountaineer George Mallory is famously reported by The New York Times to have said, when asked – after he’d attempted to climb Mount Everest in 1921 and 1922 – why he intended to have another go in 1924. The quotation might be apocryphal; it doesn’t matter. To the alpinist, the risk of the journey and the cost of the venture are far outweighed by the potential reward of an achievement few people can claim.

Ingrid Laubrock is a born alpinist, to judge by this, her first recorded collection of orchestral works. Perhaps it should come as no surprise: She is, after all, a saxophonist and composer who risked much in venturing from Berlin via London to establish a base in busy, competitive New York City – an improviser’s Everest, one might claim. From her arrival in 2009, she wasted no time in making an impression with her piquant writing and potent playing.

Ingrid Laubrock ©Caroline Mardok

Laubrock, it bears asserting, had nothing to prove when she set her sights on the orchestra. Her credentials as an ambitious, skillful composer of intricate yet visceral works for small ensembles is well established—not least on the evidence of her excellent, much-admired Intakt recordings. Whether writing for conventionally constituted assemblages like her quintet Anti-House and trio Paradoxical Frog, or for a more unusual complement, like the mix of tuba, koto, electronics, and more that she convened two years ago for Serpentines, Laubrock has demonstrated a formidable capacity for writing music of intricacy, integrity, and broad appeal.

Still, no adventurous soul is content to stay in place. “The mountains are calling & I must go,” the naturalist John Muir is quoted as having said about his own call to action. Laubrock, an artist whose influences and formative experiences were many and varied, likewise felt the call of heights intrinsic to the orchestral experience: the mighty presence of massed musicians, the elemental weight and prismatic variety of the sounds they can produce, perhaps even the daunting scale of the venture itself.

Both of the works included on this album are of recent vintage: Laubrock wrote Vogelfrei for the second Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute Reading, presented by the American Composers Orchestra at Columbia University in 2013, and created Contemporary Chaos Practices for the 2017 moers festival. But the creative spark that led to their conception came many years before, shortly after Laubrock landed in New York, when she attended a program of large-ensemble works led by Anthony Braxton and Walter Thompson at Brooklyn’s Irondale Center.

Braxton, among the most original, accomplished artists America has produced, needs no introduction in this context. Thompson, less well known outside a circle of cognoscenti and devotees, is a bandleader, multi-instrumentalist, and composer who developed a practice called “Soundpainting,” a system in which an elaborate vocabulary of hand signals is used to initiate and shape large-ensemble improvisations. (The practice is distinct from Butch Morris’s similarly conceived “conductions,” but not wholly dissimilar in practice.)

For Laubrock – who had encountered conduction previously as a performer with the London Improvisers Orchestra, and who had been mulling notions of orchestral composition already – the seamless blend of composition, improvisation, and conduction she encountered at Irondale proved invigorating. Still, that a largely self-taught musician would entertain the notion of orchestral writing was itself a show of courage and resolve. The orchestral world, even in the 21st century, is a gated community, seemingly off limits to composers whose background, heritage, or training deviates from narrowly conceived standards. Fundamental characteristics, like race and gender, also pose obstacles, if tacitly.

Ingrid Laubrock &  Nate Wooley

Such issues were what motivated the American Composers Orchestra and the Institute of Jazz Studies at Columbia University to establish the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute. “A stupid word like jazz is not going to hold me back from doing what I want to do with a set of instruments, or with a set of people, or with an environment, or with discourse,” the great composer and improvising trombonist George Lewis said during a public event in the institute’s first year.

Taking Lewis’s message to heart, Laubrock participated in the second institute, held in Los Angeles. She produced the first version of Vogelfrei for that occasion, and then had opportunities to revisit and refine it subsequently for performances by the Tri-Centric Orchestra in New York and the EOS Chamber Orchestra Cologne at the moers festival— in the process adding an instrumental soloist (pianist Kris Davis), prominent parts for amplified contrabass clarinet (Josh Sinton) and trumpet (Nate Wooley), guided orchestral improvisations, and eight vocalists. The happy serendipity of a Moers curator being present for the Tri-Centric performance also led to Laubrock’s second opportunity to write for orchestra, resulting in Contemporary Chaos Practices, which involves an orchestra augmented with improvisers on saxophone, trumpet, guitar, and piano.

Mary Halvorson

Kris Davis

Gazing at the scores for both works, one senses immediately the formal discipline Laubrock derived from close studies of scores by Ligeti, Lutoslawski, Xenakis, and other modern composers, who all had found practical, effective ways to codify spontaneous performance into their rigorously scored works. Laubrock goes even further to establish a confident détente between control and chance by employing two conductors: one to guide the ensemble in exactingly scored material, and another to reconcile Laubrock’s architecture with the players’ elaborations in improvised sections, tailoring the work to a given setting and circumstance.

The present recording, recorded in a studio by an ensemble of first-call freelancers led by two ideally sympathetic conductors, Eric Wubbels and Taylor Ho Bynum, provides eloquent evidence of what Laubrock has achieved. Both of her orchestral pieces – Vogelfrei, with its variegated textures, animated rhythms, swooping vocals, and inexorable momentum; and Contemporary Chaos Practices, where four instantly distinguishable soloists (Mary Halvorson, Davis, Wooley, and Laubrock herself) retain their individuality while negotiating a brilliantly rendered aural landscape – serve notice of an estimable composer who has something to say, and knows exactly how to say it.

Shout it from the mountaintops.

Steve Smith is the director of publications for National Sawdust, a performing-arts venue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Village Voice, and other publications, and he previously served as a staff editor and writer for the Boston Globe and Time Out New York.

PERFORMANCES:

with Tom Rainey's Obbligato

10/15 JazzClub Hannover, DE

with GGRIL (Grand Groupe Régional d'Improvisation Liberée)

10/27 Rimouski, QC

10/28 Casa del Popolo, Montreal, QC

with Zeena Parkins & Tom Rainey

10/29 I-Beam, Brooklyn, NY

with Mary Halvorsen and more musicians TBA

11/03 Berlin Jazz Festival, Berlin, DE 

with Mary Halvorsen Octet

11/04 Berlin Jazz Festival, Berlin, DE 

11/08 Oslo, NO

11/09 Bergen, NO

11/10 Gdansk, PL

11/11 Mantova Auditorium Monteverdi, Mantova, IT

11/12 Venice  Auditorium Santa Margherita, Venice, IT

11/13 Madrid, ES

with Nate Wooley's Battle Pieces

12/03 Roulette, New York, NY

with Tom Rainey Trio

12/30 Cornelia St. Cafe, New York, NY

www.ingridlaubrock.com

Ken Vandermark, Nate Wooley, Sylvie Courvoisier and Tom Rainey - Noise Of Our Time (INTAKT RECORDS 2018)

It was only during Ken Vandermark's residency at the Jazz club 

The Stone in January 2016 that Vandermark found himself in the 

same vicinity as Nate Wooley, Sylvie Courvoisier and Tom Rainey. 

A year later they went into the studio with nine compositions – 

three each by Courvoisier, Vandermark and Wooley. 

These four musicians have well-documented, distinct personalities 

which, in this context, results in performances full of surprises, 

rich contrasts and shared responsibilities. The music sounds 

thoughtful, but never over-wrought. They play by in tuition, yet 

retain a vivid complexity. Their composing is transparent and 

un-clichéd; their improvising provided with a remarkable coherence 

and openness. And perhaps it is exactly this – a fresh collective 

unity that keeps their respective personalities and idiosyncrasies 

intact – that brings them success in this bold and collaborative 

performance. Art needs to pique and renew your interest, take 

you on inspiring and surprising journeys and sometimes even 

confront your own biases. Creating, not reviving as a way to 

evolve and to keep going forward in all directions.

Ken Vandermark: Saxophone, Clarinet

Nate Wooley: Trumpet

Sylvie Courvoisier: Piano

Tom Rainey: Drums Percussion

1. Checkpoint 05:03

2. Track and Field 06:39

3. Sparks 03:44

4. The Space Between the Teeth 06:12

5. Tag 04:32

6. Songs of Innocence 04:17

7. VWCR 04:00

8. Truth Through Mass Individuation 04:03

9. Simple Cut 05:41

Recorded August 17, 2017, at Oktaven Audio, Mount Vernon,

New York, USA, by Ryan Streber.

Mixed and mastered by Ryan Streber.

Cover art and graphic design: Jonas Schoder.

Liner notes: Guy Peters.

Photos: Christophe Alary, Daniel Sheehan, Cristina Marx, Denis Dalby. Produced and published by Patrik Landolt, Intakt Records.

Nate Wooley / Torben Snekkestad - Of Echoing Bronze (FUNDACJA SLUCHAJ 2018)

Ivo Perelman / Matthew Shipp / Nate Wooley - Philosopher's Stone (LEO RECORDS 2017)

With this recording Ivo Perelman introduces a new member into his circle, the great trumpeter Nate Wooley. The original working title of this album was Alchemy. The revised title Philosopher's Stone refers to the mythic material sought by alchemists of the Middle Ages, who fervently believed that it could turn common metals into silver or gold — and, not incidentally, confer immortality. Here, the materials are anything but common. But the music — thanks to the science of recording, and the magic of these empathetic improvisers — will remain long after the moments in which it first took shape.

1. Part 1 2:31

2. Part 2 3:51

3. Part 3 3:04

4. Part 4 3:26

5. Part 5 5:54

6. Part 6 5:24

7. Part 7 6:00

8. Part 8 7:36

9. Part 9 4:17

10. Part 10 7:31

Ivo Perelman tenor saxophone

Matthew Shipp piano

Nate Wooley trumpet

David Grubbs - Creep Mission (DRAG CITY RECORDS 2017)

Your Creep Mission, should you choose to accept it: bi-composed/improvised guitar instrumentals featuring Grubbs and "Prismrose" collaborator Eli Kenzler, with Nate Wooley and Jan St. Werner. File under: melancholy raga, sludge-rock, pointalistic electroacoustics and nylon string minatures.

1. Skylight 6:29

2. Creep Mission 6:01

3. The Bonapartes Of Baltimore 2:52

4. Jeremiadaic 5:03

5. Jack Dracula In A Bar 2:26

6. Return Of The Creep 3:29

7. The C In Certain 6:24

David Grubbs guitars

Nate Wooley trumpet (1, 2, 4, 6, 7)

Eli Keszler  drums, percussion  (1, 2, 4)

Jan St. Werner  electronics (1, 4)

Nate Wooley - Battle Pieces 2 (CATALYTIC SOUND 2017)

“Battle Pieces 2” is just a several days ago released avant-garde jazz album which was released by “Catalytic Sound Records”. Album was recorded by a group of masterfull  avant-garde jazz improvisers – Nate Wooley (trumpet), Sylvie Courvoisier (piano), Ingrid Laubrock (saxophone) and Matt Moran (vibraphone). These four musicians have original and essential playing and improvising style. They had been improvising with othr famous contemporary avant-garde jazz masters and released plenty of albums. Their music has essential, expressive and contrastic sound. Fast and expressive solos usually are the bursts of energy there are mixed various playing techniques and expressions. The musicians improvising is dynamic and constantly changing – sometimes it’s sharp, aggresive and provocative, sometimes – very peaceful, quiet and soft. Through the years of their musical career the musicians had created original and interesting playing style and their own sound. As a quartet they also had been improvising many times already and their improvisations usually gently combine together in one composition.

Album compositions have dynamic and interesting sound. All of them are based on avant-garde jazz elements – collective improvisations, unpredictable and dynamoic rhythmic, free form ans structure and very colorful musical pattern – these elements are just a part of compositions. Improvisations mood is always changing – from soft and calm it can suddenly turn out to live, energetic, evocative and expressive improvisations.

Wide range of sounds, timbres and moods create innovative sound of the compositions. These compositions have very low rhythmical and melodic basement. It’s based on various sound experiments, combinations of different playing techniques which expand the comfort zone of the instrument. All these musical techniques, unusual sounds, separate timbres, short melodic elements are essentially combined together in one musical pattern. The musical pattern is also based on soft harmony, dialogues between saxophone and trumpet are one of the most effective and interesting episodes of the compositions.

This album music have extraordinary sound and a calm, soft, quiet and subtle mood of mostly compositions.

01. Battle Pieces 4

02. Battle Pieces 5

03. Battle Pieces 6

04. Battle Pieces 7

Nate Wooley: trumpet

Ingrid Laubrock: tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone

Sylvie Courvoisier: piano

Matt Moran: vibraphone

Nate Wooley - Knknighgh (Minimal Poetry for Aram Saroyan) CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2017

We can say without exaggeration that the new project by Nate Wooley introduces in the so-called “free jazz” format a system that few times – if ever – we encountered with such a relevance for the musical results since the harmolodic process proposed by Ornette Coleman. And the always surprising trumpeter is very much aware of the ground breaking possibilities of this band with the upcoming New York musicians Chris Pitsiokos, Brandon Lopez and Dré Hocevar, and of the music recorded in “Knknighgh” (to be pronounced as “knife”), when presenting it as «a radical new take on the classic free jazz quartet tradition». So it is: you imediatly recognize the approach as free jazz, and yet, free jazz never sounded like this before.

The band uses short composed materials written by Wooley and those fragmented materials are looped and pushed to the limit, triggered by any of the players in whatever order chosen in the moment. At first, the procedure seems to adapt some of the repetitive strategies of minimal music, and yet again, it doesn’t sound like minimalism, and neither it is a crossover between free jazz and minimal music. Wooley’s new system gets its references outside of music, and namely in the poetry of Aram Saroyan, «the master of the one word poem», as punk singer and writer Richard Hell calls him. Of course, both Hell and Wooley are particularly interested in the musical qualities of Saroyan’s poetry, its rhythmic fluency, its alliterations, its repetition of syllabs and inherent sounds. From it, Nate Wooley created a new kind of free jazz in which less is more and the resume of a particular melodic phrase isn’t necessarily the reintroduction of a chorus line. Prepare yourself to be marveled…

1. Knknighgh 3 16:19

2. Knknighgh 4 12:36

3. Knknighgh 6 11:06

4. Knknighgh 7 6:36

5. Knknighgh 8 10:15

Nate Wooley  trumpet

Chris Pitsiokos  alto saxophone

Brandon Lopez  bass

Dré Hočevar  drums

Available on Amazon and iTunes

Harris Eisenstadt Canada Day Quartet - On Parade in Parede (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2017)

“On Parade in Parede” was recorded when Eisenstadt and company played a series of concerts at SMUP, an intimate venue in Parede, a beach town near Lisbon, during their spring 2016 Europe tour. The place inspired the title. An homage to his birth country (he’s lived in the US more than twenty years), Canada Day offers a universal music, not just dedicated to North America, but also to Africa, Cuba, and Europe. Here Eisenstadt reunites Americans Nate Wooley and Matt Bauder with French-German Pascal Niggenkemper. Though Eisenstadt’s flagship ensemble has released five recordings in the last decade (four quintets and an octet), here you have Canada Day’s very first quartet recording. If there’s a good side of present day globalization, this is it.

1 Innuendo Is Nobody's Friend

2 Sometimes You Gotta Ask For What You Want

3 A Fine Kettle Of Fish

4 We All Ate What We Wanted To Eat, Parts 2 & 5

5 Sympathy Batters No Parsnips

6 We All Ate What We Wanted To Eat, Parts 3 / She Made Old Bones

7 We All Ate What We Wanted To Eat, Part 1

Nate Wooley trumpet

Matt Bauder tenor saxophone

Pascal Niggenkemper bass

Harris Eisenstadt drums, compositions

All compositions by Harris Eisenstadt, Heresy Music (SOCAN)

Recorded April 30th-May 1st at SUMP Parede, Portugal by Luis Candeias | Mixed by Luis Candeias | Mastered by Luís Delgado

Produced by Harris Eisenstadt | Executive Producer: Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Design by Travassos

Nate Wooley - Argonautica (2016)

Argonautica is a sonic analog to the epic poem of the same name. Built in three parts, or chapters, the music makes oblique reference to dodecaphony, ambient tape music, and the driving minimalist rock of Terry Riley. It was conceived and written as a tribute to Wooley’s mentor Ron Miles, who plays the lyrical cornet role to the leader’s more caustic trumpet voice. The rhythm section is equally balanced with Grammy award winning new music pianist Cory Smythe in tandem with Belgian Fender-Rhodes legend Jozef Dumoulin and the brash upstart free jazz drumming of Devin Gray interlocking with the fiery precision of Rudy Royston. The group is compositionally set in different duos and trios, working together and separately throughout the fifty-plus minutes of music to slowly build to a shattering climax that raises the question of what jazz-rock can be in the twenty-first century.

Argonautica 42:53

Nate Wooley: Trumpet 

Ron Miles: Cornet 

Cory Smythe: Piano 

Jozef Dumoulin: Fender Rhodes and Electronics 

Devin Gray: Drums 

Rudy Royston: Drums 

Music by Nate Wooley - FourWordsSeaMusic (BMI) 

Recorded December 9, 2014 

at Firehouse 12, New Haven, CT 

by Chris Reba 

Mixed and Mastered by Nick Lloyd 

Graphic Design by Megan Craig 

Produced by Nate Wooley 

Co-produced by Nick Lloyd

Nate Wooley - Seven Storey Mountain V (2016)

Seven Storey Mountain V is the fifth of seven evening length works that began with a Festival of New Trumpet commission in 2007. Recorded live at Abrons Art Center in New York City as part of the 2015 Tectonics NY festival, SSMV continues Wooley’s idea of creating an ecstatic and communal music

That is non-religious and non-genre based. The massive collective group includes international stars from the jazz, new music, electronic, and noise worlds–working together to realize Wooley’s singular musical vision. The group, which is the largest to date, features Wooley on amplified trumpet alongside C. Spencer Yeh and Samara Lubelski on amplified violins, Ben Vida on electronics, Ben Hall and Ryan Sawyer on percussion, Chris Dingman and Matt Moran on vibraphone, Colin Stetson, Josh Sinton, and Dan Peck on amplified reeds and brass, and the TILT Brass octet (Chris McIntyre, Gareth Flowers, Mike Gurfeld, Tim Leopold, Will Lang, Matt Melore, Jen Baker, and James Roger).

1. Seven Storey Mountain (49:23)

Personnel:

Nate Wooley: amplified trumpet, tape

Ben Vida: electronics

C. Spencer Yeh & Samara Lubelski: amplified violin

Colin Stetson: amplified bass saxophone

Josh Sinton: amplified contrabass clarinet

Dan Peck: amplified tuba

Ben Hall & Ryan Sawyer: drums

Chris Dingman & Matt Moran: vibraphone

TILT Brass Octet: Chris McIntyre (trombone, conductor), Gareth Flowers, Mike Gurfeld & Tim Leopold (trumpets), Will Lang, Matt Melore, Jen Baker & James Roger (trombones)

Recorded May 9, 2015 at Abrons Art Center, presented by Tectonics NY/Issue Project Room, NYC

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Nate Wooley Website

Harris Eisenstadt - Canada Day IV (2015)

Canada Day III made many best of 2012 lists. In the meantime, award-winning drummer Harris Eisenstadt launched a new group, Golden State (with two releases on Songlines). Now his longest-running band returns with its most accomplished album yet, a thoroughly entertaining, provocative program of original compositions that blends swinging modern jazz and spikier, off-center avant-jazz styles. The band’s idionsyncratic sound world features close percussive/textural interplay between gorgeous vibist Dingman and Eisenstadt, who leads from the kit almost like a modern-day Art Blakey. Frontline soloists Wooley (whom Dave Douglas has called “one of the most interesting and unusual trumpeters living today”) and Bauder (who recently toured for a year with Arcade Fire) play the whole jazz/improv tradition with great verve and character. Pascal Niggenkemper has taken over the bass chair, and the arrangements allow for many more small groupings than before. This eager, quick-witted bunch (highly respected bandleaders all) take full advantage of their opportunities with playing that frequently elicits smiles for its daring and abundant good humor. As Harris says, “I do think we’re at our best when there’s a palpable sense of high-wire negotiation of written and improvised materials happening. There’s a congeniality amongst us that is also palpable. I value that looseness and trust within the group very much. If you’re not enjoying yourselves together, why bother?” 

Harris recaps the band’s history and current direction: “Canada Day’s first gig was at Jim Carney’s Konceptions series in Brooklyn on July 1, 2007 ­– Canada Day. My original intention – really, what motivated me to move back to New York in 2005/2006 (I lived in New York from 1998-99 before moving to California for seven years) ­– was to have a working band. I wanted to find the folks who would work together well, stick with it and develop a group concept incrementally. The group concept has changed over time as I’ve changed over time, but the core principle has remained basically the same: a quintet of standard instrumentation (with vibraphone slightly less traditional than piano would be) that could be a long-term vehicle for a variety of compositional structures and improvisational strategies. For Canada Day IV I wanted to go deeper into the possibilities of solo, duo, trio and quartet spaces within the ensemble. And rather than have stand-alone small group pieces, I decided to incorporate these different pieces into larger wholes, to keep shifting amounts of sonic information, weight and scope. As for my drumming, I continue to draw inspiration from non-drumset rhythm concepts, polyrhythmic traditions of Africa and the Diaspora, and particularly Cuban batá drumming these last five years.”

About Pascal Niggenkemper Harris has this to say: “Pascal is a fantastic interpreter, reader, creative pattern varier, and a very adventurous improviser. Playing grooves with him feels great, as does improvising textures. I would say his playing probably incorporates more extended techniques than the other Canada Day bassists. So he has this really far-reaching creativity plus that intangible thing which everybody loves about a great bass player: he makes the music feel good.”

A few notes on some of the pieces and their titles: “I started writing “After Several Snowstorms” one morning during the winter of 2014 when New York was getting dumped on. The opening bass line (which quickly morphs during the opening tenor solo and returns briefly at the beginning of the full ensemble material) has three groups of two notes… a series of one-two punches. “Sometimes It’s Hard to Get Dressed in the Morning” and “Let’s Say it Comes in Waves” both reference our son Owen, and the challenges of parenting. “Life’s Hurtling Passage Onward,” What Can be the Set to the Side” and “What’s Equal to What” all come from the same Richard Ford passage that “The Arrangement of Unequal Things,” the first track on Golden State II, came from. “Meli Melo” is actually the French name for a Canadian snack mix called (in English) “Bits and Bites.” I started writing the book for Canada Day IV with a bunch of short pieces – some of which became duet pieces within longer structures, and two that ended up making up this last piece on the record – and they all had the title “Bits and Bites” with numbers assigned to them.

 As I tried to find a title for these last two parts that came together as one piece, for some reason an image of the red bag with “Bits and Bites” on one side and “Meli Melo” on the other came into my mind. Shreddies, peanuts, pretzels, and cheese crackers all mixed up together and over-salted. A little Canadian nostalgia, I guess.”

Canada Day IV will next perform as part of Eisenstadt’s residency at The Stone from September 1-6. For more information: www.harriseisenstadt.com. The interview is linked from the Songlines release page.

Nate Wooley: trumpet

Matt Bauder: tenor saxophone

Chris Dingman: vibraphone

Pascal Niggenkemper: bass

Harris Eisenstadt: drums, compositions

After Several Snowstorms

Sometimes It's Hard to Get Dressed in the Morning

Let's Say It Comes in Waves

Life's Hurtling Passage Onward

What Can Be Set to the Side

What's Equal to What

Melio Melo

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