Cory Henry & The Funk Apostles announce debut LP, set for release September 29th

Sile Jazz 2017 | THANKS, SEE YOU SOON!

SILE JAZZ 2017 

SLOWLY GOES ON THE SUNSET BOULEVARD

TOWED BY THE ROPES IT PINCHED

KNOWING THAT ONE MOORS

JUST TO SET SAIL AGAIN

Playing with ropes, it happens to hit different keys: “Di resta in corda” has moved musicians, sketch artists, literary men, wine and beer experts, sophisticated food lovers, sea (and river) captains, together with sensitive souls from everywhere, following us enthusiastically.

Click here to see all photos of this edition

Eleven concerts, thirty-one musicians, more than two thousands participants as audience: if we can say numbers give emotions, those ones make us grateful, and proud.

To draw the breath is necessary, going through some pictures of that journey upstream, looking forward to leave again.

Go ahead following us!

Thank you so much from all of us.

HAVE A NICE HOLIDAY!

Playlist for Tom Ossana – The Thin Edge – August 9, 2017 MST 7:00 to 9:00p.m.

http://www.kzmu.org/listen.m3u ~ Use this link to access the show online.

Liberation Music Collective's "ambitious and audacious" Rebel Portraiture

The Liberation Music Collective delivers stunning jazz poetry

in new album celebrating heroes of global struggle

Rebel Portraiture, due August 17 via AD Astrum Records, features new compositions

by co-founders Hannah Fidler and Matt Riggen, recent Indiana University graduates

who now make their home in Chicago

"The members [of the Liberation Music Collective] prove there can be no music without social conscience.  But they play both without losing the impact of the other." - Carol Banks Weber, AXS

"Conceived in the blazing crucible of political awakening, and executed with a maturity way beyond its

leaders' years. . . ambitious and audacious . . . ." - Neil Tesser, The Jazz Network

August 17 CD release concert at Jazz Record Arts Collective, Chicago

In the history of civilization, no generation has managed to avoid injustice, hardship, and peril - and every generation suspects that the coming crises are the worst thus far. Nonetheless, those taking the reins in the early 21st century have more reason for concern than most of those who preceded them. Environmental change, expanding income inequality, the rise of nationalism, the collapse of diplomacy - these issues are more than enough to make the bold blanch and the squeamish retreat.

But in the activist musical tradition of such jazz composers as Charles Mingus, Max Roach, and Charlie Haden - whose pioneering Liberation Music Orchestra provides the model as well as the namesake for their efforts - the Liberation Music Collective seeks to do what artists have always done, and what they should always do. They distill the anger and despair to create works that teach and inspire. With words as well as music, they gather up the emotions that attend history's victims and turn them into beacons, focusing listeners' remembrance and galvanizing their resolve. They transform sorrow into hope.

This dynamic undergirds Rebel Portraiture, the eagerly awaited sophomore effort from the Liberation Music Collective, a contemporary jazz orchestra born in Bloomington, Indiana - under the direction of bassist/vocalist Hannah Fidler and trumpeter Matt Riggen - who interrupted the jazz conversation two years ago with their startling Siglo XXI. That album that fulfilled their mission to form "a socially-conscious big band dedicated to performing original compositions about contemporary issues." Now, on Rebel Portraiture, they go behind the issues to honor the individuals whose courage and commitment call attention to oppression and injustice the world over.

As author and GRAMMY®-winning producer Kabir Sehgal states in his informative liner notes, "These tracks are tasteful and elegant portraits of those who defied fear and spoke truth to power. Now their stories become 'music to power.'"

In the tradition of the greatest artists in any genre, the LMC achieves this consciousness-raising with grace and grit, creating pieces that can stand on their own regardless of the events that inspired them. Reading about the fallen heroes to whom these performances are dedicated will certainly deepen one's appreciation for the goals and accomplishments of the LMC. But even without the historical overview, Rebel Portraiture overflows with musical wonder. The music employs a wide range of influences and resources: African and Arabic music, rap poetry, a 19th-century American hymn, early 20th century classical music, pan-national folk songs - all within the context of the modern jazz orchestra, with sophisticated arrangements by the LMC co-founders Fidler and Riggen.

In Rebel Portraiture, contemporary heroes rub shoulders with martyrs of history. They include Berta Cáceres - an indigenous environmental activist in Honduras, assassinated in her home in 2016 for her opposition to the Agua Zarca Dam project - all the way back to Giles Corey, put to an agonizingly slow death during the Salem Witch Trials in 17th-century Massachusetts. The LMC reminds us of the fallen we may have forgotten - such as the four students killed while protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State University in 1970 - and introduces us to more recent profiles in courage, whose names have already become rallying cries for the causes they championed.

One such woman is Noxolo Nogwaza, a South African LGBTQ+ organizer who was raped, murdered, and left on the side of the road in 2011, by perpetrators who remain unknown. Her death led more than 170,000 people to sign a petition demanding more protection for victims of sexual hate crimes, and trained the world's attention on human rights in that country. Riggen's homage, titled "Ditchside Monument," uses the hint of South African harmonies to craft a memorial that moves from mournful to momentous. Another dedication honors Syrian journalist Ruqia Hassan, whose blog posts reported on deteriorating conditions around the city of Raqqa under the influence of ISIS. She was murdered by the terrorist group in 2015, at the age of 20. In the composition "Iqra," the value of independent reporting like Hassan's is tied to a famous verse from the Quran in spoken word written and recited by Fidler.

The musicians of the LMC live what they believe. For the last two years, a small group drawn from the orchestra has traveled to Ferguson, Missouri - a touchstone of the Black Lives Matter movement - at the invitation of the Center for Social Empowerment and Justice. There they conducted daylong workshops to exchange ideas and share experiences (musical and otherwise) with local residents focused on racial justice. Members of the LMC have travelled together to be part of history in the making - from protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in Standing Rock, North Dakota to the streets of our nation's capital for the Women's March on Washington. These musicians strive to "show up" for the turning points of our era, both musically and personally.

In the two years since their debut, the musicians of the LMC have undergone a dramatic shift in the musical and personal relationships within the band. "I see this as a far more intimate album, in several ways," Fidler says. "The subject matter is much more personal. We're touching very deeply on intimate aspects of people's lives, involving their final actions and the decisions they made." In addition, the musicians have grown closer since Siglo XXI, making the LMC a collective in the truest sense. "That album was literally our first project as a group," Fidler explains. "But now you can really hear the result of two years working together; you can hear the trust these musicians have in each other, and in the music."

This has certainly been the case among the core members of the band, who have continued to create new projects in smaller groupings between public performances by the entire orchestra. Although various members have moved on since 2015, long-term musical relationships in the band have begun to bear fruit-especially because Fidler and Riggen have tailored many of the compositions for the individuals playing it. "So, when we know that our lead trumpet player will be available, we write certain parts that only she can play," Fidler points out - a practice that came to fruition in the music of Duke Ellington, whose 1941 suite Black, Brown and Beige was one of the first jazz works driven by concepts of social justice and racism.

Indiana natives Hannah Fidler and Matt Riggen are both scientist-musicians: Riggen graduated with degrees in jazz and biology, and Fidler completed a double major in jazz bass and neuroscience. They met and bonded over music in the classes and performance groups led by GRAMMY-nominated trombonist Wayne Wallace, who is renowned for his exploration of Latin American musical traditions. Fidler and Riggen formed the Liberation Music Collective in 2015 as a way to channel their sociopolitical concerns into meaningful music. Since graduating from IU, both have moved to Chicago to pursue their careers and to introduce new musicians to their engaging brand of jazz activism.

Jon Cowherd's "Gateway" Shipping Now! (NEW VELLE RECORDS)

Shipping now!  Jon Cowherd's "Gateway".  A record of all original, never heard before material ,from one of New York City's most heralded bands.  We can't wait to hear your response to this one....

Gateway

“He absolutely influences me and inspires me in the way that his compositions all have a great vibration and mood and architecture.” 

– Brian Blade, on Jon’s compositions

"I love that Brian used the word “architecture” to describe Jon’s writing.  These songs do feel designed almost as much as written.  This is not to say they are fussily constructed—melody, rather than harmonic ostentation or ornate structure, is the driving principle on every piece.  But around that melodic thread, Cowherd builds castles to explore.  Gateway is a great title for this record, because there are so many moments in these compositions when you’re stepping through some edifice that Cowherd has built and discovering another chamber to explore.  There is a wealth of ideas here."                                    – excerpted from the liner notes by Elan Mehler

"Bronco Braun"   Written by Jon Cowherd

Video shot by Sarah Enid Hagey and edited by Ben Chace

Last month we released the absolutely stellar collaboration of Kevin Hays and Lionel Loueke.  If you haven't heard it yet, check out a sneak preview, here

The 4th record in this series is from the phenomenal young bassist Chris Tordini.  Featuring guitarist Greg Ruggerio and recent Rising Star Downbeat Winner, vocalist Becca Stevens.  An album of standards, this one is a heartbreaker

Season Two:

John Patitucci Trio Featuring Yotam Silberstein and Rogerio Boccato

Kevin Hays and Lionel Loueke Duo

Jon Cowherd Quartet featuring Steve Cardenas, Tony Scherr and Brian Blade

Chris Tordini Trio featuring Becca Stevens and Greg Ruggerio

Aruán Ortiz revisiting the music of the great Cuban classical composers

Rufus Reid Trio with Steve Allee and Duduka Da Fonseca and featuring the Sirius Quartet

All of our cover and interior photographs for Season Two come from the astonishing French Collective Tendance Floue.  Our Recording Engineer on all six records is the incomparable multi-Grammy winning Marc Urselli.  Mastering engineer is the brilliant Alex Deturk .  Jim Hoppin and Sarah Enid Hagey shot lovely video for us at these sessions.  All video editing is by the award-winning Ben Chace.  Jordan Kleinman shoots all our studio photos.  Our web team is run by French genius Aymeric Auberger.  Social Media management by Jessye Mehler.  Newvelle is run by:  Elan Mehler and Jean-Christophe Morisseau

Brian Blade, Tony Scherr, Steve Cardenas and Jon Cowherd.       ©Jordan Kleinman

Paul Jones - Clean (OUTSIDE IN MUSIC Aug. 4, 2017)

Saxophonist/composer Paul Jones melds the passion of jazz, the storytelling of hip

hop and the intricacy of minimalism on his innovative second album

Clean brings together a jazz sextet, woodwind octet and chamber duo for a stunning set of

emotionally intellectual music built on Jones’ unique text-based compositional method

"Short HistoryŠ captures the musicality, passion, and promise of a talented artist at the dawn of his career." - Dan Bilawksy, All About Jazz

"Jones and his ensemble shift moods with throttle-forward speed, revealing so many musical possibilities right off the bat that the listener gets the impression that anything can happen." - Anthony Dean Harris, DownBeat

Saxophonist/composer Paul Jones draws from influences as diverse as contemporary hip hop, 20th-century minimalism and leading-edge jazz on his second album as a leader, Clean. Both heady and heartfelt, Jones' compositions may be sparked by a literary turn of phrase or the unexpected passing of a close friend, always finding unique ways to overlay the emotional onto the intellectual.

Clean (due out August 4 from Outside In Music) unfolds with the evocative narrative flow of hip hop groundbreakers like Kendrick Lamar while building on the unique architecture of minimalist pioneers such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich. This singular music is realized with the help of Jones' core sextet, a group of distinctive artists who are all leaders and composers in their own right: alto saxophonist Alex LoRe, guitarist Matt Davis, pianist Glenn Zaleski, bassist Johannes Felscher and drummer Jimmy Macbride. They're joined at various times by a woodwind octet that brings together The SNAP Saxophone Quartet and a chamber group (clarinetist Mark Dover of the Imani Winds, oboist Ellen Hindson, bassoonist Nanci Belmont and cellist Susan Mandel) as well as genre-blurring duo The Righteous Girls (flutist Gina Izzo and pianist Erika Dohi.

The music on Clean was birthed at the picturesque Banff Creative Arts Centre in Alberta, Canada, where Jones sequestered himself in January 2016 to begin devising the follow-up to his well-received 2015 debut, Short History. With the sounds of austere minimalist compositions ringing in his ears and his love of hip hop reignited by the release of Lamar's landmark To Pimp a Butterfly, Jones set to work finding ways to unite these seemingly disparate passions.

"I used to listen to a lot of hip hop in high school, and Kendrick's album reminded me of my love for the music," he recalls. "One of the things that a lot of hip hop albums do that jazz albums don't do as much is try to tell a story from start to finish. I wanted to try to do that by using different song lengths and textures, and I thought that using woodwinds in the style of Steve Reich and Philip Glass would provide interesting sonic breaks between the jazz songs."

In challenging himself to find new sources of inspiration for his music for Short History, Jones invented a method of assigning different musical notes to each letter of the alphabet, then using different words or phrases to generate melodic material. On Clean he developed that technique further, adding a random number generator that gave a wider range of notes as well as intervals. As mathematical and complex as that may sound (and no doubt is), Jones never loses sight of the emotional core of his music, also dipping into the well of personal experience to deepen these uniquely-devised melodies.

Nowhere is that more striking than on the brief "Romulo's Raga," a dizzying chamber interlude sparked by the murder of Romulo Herrera, the longtime chef at the well-known Cornelia Street Café, where Jones worked by day. "Hearing the news of this incident was almost incomprehensible to me," Jones writes in his liner notes. Composed in the wake of the tragic news, "Romulo's Raga" became the leaping-off point for several other chamber pieces interspersed throughout the album, including opener "Ive Sn Th Gra Md," "It Was Brgh Cold," and "Im Prety Uch Fkd."

Those aren't typos - each of those titles are borrowed from the opening lines of classic novels, with each letter allowed to occur only once. The first is a slight misquote from Allen Ginsberg's era-defining poem "Howl" ("I've seen the [great] minds of my generation destroyed by madness"), the second from George Orwell's ever-timely Nineteen Eighty-Four ("It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen"), and the last from Andy Weir's The Martian (you can guess it). "I Am An American" is the first line of Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, though with all those A's intact.

"The Generator," though a shimmering ballad in execution, references Jones' "nerdy compositional method" explicitly, as does, albeit in a more self-deferential fashion, "Alphabet Soup." The technique serves two purposes: it takes care of the ever-present challenge of coming up with new song titles while mandating a unique genesis for each piece. "A lot of people just sit down at the piano and expect magic to happen," he explains, "and we all end up coming up with the same ideas over and over again. I wanted to find a way to get at different harmonic and melodic ideas."

The process doesn't stop there, however. Though initially generated by the letters in the two names of its title, "Buckley vs. Vidal" bristles with the adversarial tension of the infamous televised debates between the celebrity intellectuals. "Hola, Amigo" takes its title from a sign spotted in Canada - with a phrase that no native Spanish speaker would ever utter, suggesting, especially as it follows the ambiguous "I Am An American," the fraught territory of cultural difference and miscommunication - especially timely given recent political developments.

The album's title and its namesake track, while hinting at the fastidious intricacies of Jones and his stellar ensemble, simply echoes his own nickname from Maine's Camp Encore/Coda, where he is a faculty member. It's humorously bookended by the jerky rhythms of "Dirty Curty," the less appealing sobriquet of an old friend who went without showering for three months - during which time he met the love of his life. "Centre in the Woods" tips its hat to the scenery of the Banff Centre, while the frenetic "The Minutiae of Existence" tallies the banal necessities of daily life.

His unique blend of jazz, classical and pop music influences unite Jones with a cohort of young innovators on the modern NYC scene. They include artists with whom Jones has worked, including Matt Davis' Aerial Photograph, Nicholas Biello's Vagabond Soul with Clarence Penn, R&B singer-songwriter Eli "Paperboy" Reed, Leon Boykins and Jonathan Parker. While a student at the Manhattan School of Music, Jones also had the opportunity to perform alongside such greats as Randy Brecker, Dave Liebman and Joe Lovano. He's also taught privately at CenterStage, Harrison School of Music, Needham Music, PS-290, and the Rye Arts Center, and given master classes at the Contemporary Music Institute in Zhuhai, China and the Gimcheon School of the Arts in Korea.

www.paulthejones.com