Quoan - Fine Dining (feat. Brian Walsh, Daniel Rosenboom, Sam Minaie & Mark Ferber) ORENDA RECORDS 2018

Brimming with cheeky humor and fearless creativity, Quoan tips its hat to the historic lineage of the modern, chord-less jazz quartet with an album that feels classic yet new, biting yet sweet, and that overflows with virtuosity and character.

Two prominent Los Angeles's wind/brass improvisers join forces with a formidable New York rhythm section to deliver Fine Dining under the band name Quoan. Though clarinetist Brian Walsh and trumpeter Daniel Rosenboom have collaborated in numerous bands and projects for more than a decade, this is their first co-led ensemble, and the results are as nuanced and engaging as such a union would suggest. Bassist Sam Minaie and drummer Mark Ferber ground and drive the group with a remarkably nimble approach, ranging from elegant to burly, as the bi-coastal group navigates the timbral landscapes of the modern chord-less quartet. With a fearless approach to composition and improvisation, Quoan steps into the lineage of this classic avant-garde jazz format with grace, creativity, and a cheeky sense of humor that is downright infectious.

Brian Walsh and Daniel Rosenboom are two of the most sought after voices in the Los Angeles creative music scene and have appeared on dozens of recordings in jazz, pop, classical, experimental and other genres. Walsh is a member of the contemporary classical groups wild Up and gnarwhallaby and has previously worked alongside figures as diverse as Gavin Bryars, Meredith Monk and Nels Cline. In addition to leading his own bands Burning Ghosts and the Daniel Rosenboom Quintet, Rosenboom has worked in the groups of Vinny Golia, Josh Groban and Anthony Wilson and works frequently in the storied Hollywood film-scoring community for such notable titles as the recent Star Wars films. Sam Minaie has worked with many of today's leading jazz musicians, including Tigran Hamasyan, Donny McCaslin, and Ravi Coltrane, and Mark Ferber has performs regularly with such notable artists as Gary Peacock, Ralph Alessi, and Brad Shepik. 

This wealth of performance experience is on full display in the expansive stylistic ground covered throughout the duration of Quoan's Fine Dining. Beginning with the brooding groove of “The Last,” Walsh and Rosenboom carve out their own distinct sonic spaces while exploring the shifting colors of microtonal improvisation. This group has moments of unabashed jazz as well, such as the hard-swinging “Capitol Absurdity” and slippery groove that anchors “Demicolon.” The group plays cleverly with structure, as in the rhythmic palindrome of "216" or the aleatoric “Fist," and plays with ironic sound painting in "Legislation" and the title track "Fine Dining." Several miniatures pepper the record, where the group breaks into factions of duos and trios (“Gnomish”, “Shunyata” and “Witch's Butter”), as well as a couple moments of profound lyrical respite in the waltz “Moon Cage” and the elegiac closer “Braids and Brooms.” 

History is not lost on these musicians. Recorded live, all together in the same room at 64 Sound in Highland Park, CA, using a total of 9 microphones, the group embraces an old-school sound that places the listener in the room with palpable energetic interplay between band mates. This marriage of history and innovation extends even to Eron Rauch's cover art, which presents a wonderfully "kill-your-idols" style homage to Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground. With Fine Dining Quoan presents an album that feels classic yet new, biting yet sweet, and overflowing with light-hearted virtuosity.

1. The Last 07:44

2. Shunyata 01:34

3. Demicolon 06:25

4. Fine Dining 03:20

5. Moon Cage 07:26

6. Gnomish 01:26

7. Fist 02:14

8. 216 09:51

9. Witch's Butter 01:17

10. Legislation 00:22

11. Capitol Absurdity 06:06

12. Braids and Brooms 08:42

Tracks 1, 5, 7, 12 composed by Brian Walsh (ASCAP)

Published by Walsh Set Music (ASCAP)

Tracks 3, 8, 11 composed by Daniel Rosenboom (ASCAP)

Published by Daniel Rosenboom Music (ASCAP)

Tracks 2, 4, 6, 9, 10 improvised by Quoan

Brian Walsh - Clarinet, Bass Clarinet, Contrabass Clarinet

Daniel Rosenboom - Trumpet, Piccolo Trumpet, Flugelhorn

Sam Minaie - Bass

Mark Ferber - Drums

Recorded October 19, 2017

64 Sound, Highland Park, CA

Sound Engineered by Theo Karon

Mixed by Daniel Rosenboom

Orenda Sound, Los Angeles, CA

Mastered by Sam Minaie

Bird Food Studio, New York, NY

Art and Design by Eron Rauch

Chris Bowden - Unlikely Being (UK VIBE RECORDS February 28, 2018)

Formed in late 2017, Unlikely Being is the uber-exciting new project led by saxophonist/composer/arranger Chris Bowden. This stand-out quartet features Jim Watson on piano and keys, Chris Dodd on bass and Neil Bullock on drums. Trumpet player Bryan Corbett adds a 5th dimension on the band’s inaugural release. Bowden takes the listener on an innovative roller-coaster ride of a journey depicting his eventful life experiences through his music. 

‘Unlikely Being’ draws on Bowden’s multi-faceted material from the cult, classic albums “Time Capsule” (Soul Jazz Records) and “Slightly Askew” (Ninja Tune), along with music from the infamous (yet unreleased) “The Incredible Death of Cash Bodean”. Hints of Bowden’s work with “The Herbaliser”, “4Hero” and “The Heritage Orchestra” are evident throughout, yet it is a timeless, optimistic, jazz-fuelled quality in the saxophonist’s new compositions that really sing out loud.

Ryan Meagher - Lost Days (FRESH SOUND NEW TALENT RECORDS 2018)

Ryan Meagher (pronounced Marr) is a jazz guitarist and composer who grew up in San Jose, California. His teenage years were split between taking ground balls and hitting soft-toss on ball fields with stomping on distortion pedals and kicking over mic stands in garage band rehearsals. He launched his international reputation in New York City in 2003 after completing his bachelor of music degree at San Diego State University. During his years in New York, he released his debut jazz album "Sun Resounding," followed by his second album entitled "Atroefy" on Fresh Sound New Talent Records (FSNT). His third album "Tone," also on FSNT, was created while he was splitting time between graduate studies at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) and New York City.

Not soon after relocating to Portland, Meagher teamed up with the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble, the local non-profit organization (of which he would later become an important leader), and recorded a live album that would be released on their budding record label, PJCE Records. “Tango in the City of Roses," was recorded live in concert at Ivories jazz club in 2014 alongside his mentor from UNR, Peter Epstein (alto and soprano sax), George Colligan (piano), Chris Higgins (bass), and Matt Mayhall (drums). The album is a confluence of regionality in that Meagher, Epstein, and Mayhall all shared Reno as a home base for some time; Colligan, Higgins, Epstein, and Meagher resided in Portland at one time or another; and Epstein, Colligan, Higgins, and Meagher all called New York City home for a period.

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01. Bayou Brasileira

02. Absurdly Delinquent

03. Lost Days

04. Brook’s Little Blues

05. Introduction to Heart-Whole

06. Heart-Whole

07. South Slope

08. Deep Ocean Hall

09. Meagher

10. Bayou Brasileira (Surf Reprise)

All tracks written by Ryan Meaghe

Ryan Meagher (guitar, Irish bouzouki & glockenspiel)

Bill McHenry (tenor sax)

George Colligan (piano, Hammond organ, Wurlitzer electric piano & Fender Rhodes)

Chris Higgins (bass)

Mark Ferber (drums)

Recorded at Map Room Studios, in Portland, Oregon, April 13 & 14, 2017

MONTRÉAL EN LUMIÉRE: On Saturday March 3, the Night is yours!

On Saturday, March 3, the Night is yours!

Métro open all night long at the usual fare

Bang Bang The Boogie: Jojoflores & Cesar with special guest Quicksound Live!

Free

11 p.m. to 2 a.m.

Énergir stage

Hip-hop night with Sarahmée, Naya Ali, Marie-Gold and

Tyleen Worrell 

Free

Midnight to 3 a.m.

L'Astral, Maison du Festival

Overtime

Free

8 p.m. to Midnight 

Pointe-à-Callière — Cité d'archéologie et d'histoire de Montréal

Guided tours

Three different routes

Free, reservation required

Departure at 6:30 p.m., Maison de la culture Frontenac

Departures at 7 p.m., Écomusée du fier monde

L'Amalgame — Quebec exotic winter

$5

10 p.m. to 1 a.m.

SDC Hochelaga-Maisonneuve

Ligne d'or, ligne de vie

Free

10 p.m. to Midnight

Fonderie Darling

The literary improvisation league

(re) mix works

Free

10 p.m. to 1 a.m.

Maison des écrivains

Intermix

Free

9 p.m. to 1 a.m.

Parc Saint-Viateur pavilion

Noche en Blanco : Latinx (re) mix

Free

8 p.m. to 3 a.m.

Eastern Bloc

A Short Night

Voluntary contribution

9:30 p.m. to 1 a.m.

Chez l'Éditeur, café littéraire

Noah Preminger: Genuinity via CRISS CROSS RECORDS

Genuinity

Thirty-one-year-old tenor saxophonist Noah Preminger's Criss Cross debut is his tenth leader CD, and fifth in the pianoless quartet context with trumpeter Jason Palmer and bassist Kim Cass, joined for the first time on this ocassion by the brilliant drummer Dan Weiss. Unlike Preminger's four previous no-chordal-instrument dates, the hour-long program consists entirely of the leader's original pieces. Each evokes a different mood and tonal ambiance with strong melodies underpinby percolating grooves that provoke unfailingly cohesive, thematic improvisations by the horns.

In preparing his nine songs, Preminger hewed to his recent m.o. of "sitting down with my saxophone every day, recording what I do, and listeling back-a stream of consciousness. "He contrasted this process with writing on the piano, as he did on his first-ever date, the eclectic 2007 album Dry Bridge Road, Kimbrough, guitarist Ben Morder, trumpeter Russ Johnson, bassist John Hébert and drummer Ted Poor.

"I was writing at the piano a lot then, so I was writing with the piano in mind," he says. "Then the record label I'd signed with had a certain vision for me as an artist, and I was pushed in directions I might not have gone in if I hadn't been guided that way. On this record, the basslines, the harmonies everything came from my horn. I feel taht's a more genuine way to express who I am as an artist than coming up with a form and then writing a melody over it. I play piano just fine, and I still write on piano as well as guitar. But the saxophone is literally my voice."

It's fun to play the name-that-influence game with Preminger, whose vocalized, caress-all-the-notes, reflective-yet-vigorous tonal personality coalesces and refracts a broad swath of tenor saxophone language. "I've dipped my feet in he attended Dave Liebman's Pennsylvania jazz camp. sparking an enduring, fruitful relationship with the elder master, who he calls "my first main guru." He credits Liebman and saxophone sages George Garzone and Jerry Bergonzi (mentors when Preminger attended New England Conservatory between 2003 and 2007) for nurturing his loose, relaxed approach.

"These guys have deep history in their playing," Preminger says. "They understand what has come before them, and each established an individual voice. Each one has a sort of free quality to their improvisation. They're not so confined by changes on a form. I really relate to that. I don't feel necessarily tied to 4/4. or tied to a pulse. That's fun. I don't feel like I'm stuck. It makes me enjoy what I do more."

After graduating NEC, Preminger moved to New York, finding work with elders like Cecil McBee, who employed him, and Billy Hart, whose skills he retained on several occasions. Thrust into the fray, Preminger -who cites a chronological influence tree that moves roughly fron Joshua Redman to Joe Lovano to Ornette Coleman to John Coltrane- grew into the realization that "I want to play every time like it¡s my last day on earth, which is what separates the masters from your Grade-B cat. "As his career evolved, Preminger -who returned to Boston in 2015 to get a Masters degree, and still lives there- has made in his business "to surround myself with cats who understand that."

Each of Preminger's partners herein qualifies for that encomium. You couls describe Palmer, 38, himself the leader of six small ensemble dates, as Preminger's aesthetic doppelganger for his gorgeus tone, broad knowledge of just back in Boston, beelined to Wally's Jazz Café, where Palmer has led the house band most weekends since 2004.

"He's like Don Cherry with chops, " Preminger jokes. "He knows every song ever written in the history of the American book, but he's a true improviser, a real artist, which you don't offen find. We have a special connection on the bandstand."

The Preminger-Kim Cass connection dates to their shared undergraduate experience at NEC. "Kim is a one of a kind player who does things other people can't do, with a unique harmonic and rhythmic approach, " Preminger says. Throughout the proccedings, the Maine-born bassists's catlike reflexes, impeccable time feel, and centered tone stamp him as an occupant of the upper branches of his instrumental tree circa 2017.

Preminger observes that his recent compositions suited the mammoth skill sets of drummer Dan Weiss, familiar to assidous Criss Cross listeners -and an internationel cohort of fans and connoisseurs- for his contributions to six albums by David Binney, and as well as his own sui generis leader albums and sideman work with such upper echelon improvisers as Rudresh Mahanthappa, Rez Abassi, Miles Okazaki, Amir El-Saffar, Jen Shyu, Matt Mitchell and Joel Harrison.

"Dan has incredible energy," Preminger states. "He lets things feel open rhythmically, and whether you're in 4 or 13, it will never fall apart. It will always be tippin', it will always have energy, and he'll be right next to me the whole time. He understands arc, he understands form, and he understands phrasing, which a lot of people don't."

Weiss's prowess in the arts of rhythmic design and thematic development immediately come to the fore on the opening track, Halfway To Hartford, a kinetic opening salvo that evokes and Old and New Dreams ambiance. After Preminger's gnarly, 38-second intro, and then a bravura 50-second-long Premimger-Palmer unison on the melody, each soloist engages Weiss in extended conversation.

Preminger and Palmer exchange ideas and play overlapping lines over Weiss' "stinky funk groove" on Mad Town, Preminger's slightly melancholic depiction of a frigid, snowy winter weekend in Madison, Wisconsin, home of the University of Wisconsin, where the saxophonist was "for a moment contemplating doing a Ph.D."

At Preminger's request, Weiss puts a Clyde Stubblefield 6/4 groove on T.S., a gentle refrain named for the initials of a special friend with whom Preminger has "listened to a lot of music and gone dancing, and who's into what she calls the smile-and-sway. "Preminger's neologism aptly describes the quality of his interplay with Palmer during the tune's first section, after which Cass unleashes his chops onmultiple choruses of dialog with the leader. "Let's say you've had a few drinks, and you're listening to something that really grooves," Preminger continues. "You kind of just smile and sway. I wrote it for her and the arc of her life."

A drum fanfare introduces A.H., for guitar hero Allan Holdsworth, who passed away in 2017. "As I was writing this melody on my horn, and the counter-line below it with the bass, I imagined it as something Holdsworth migth have come up with," says Preminger, whose creative solo, spurred by Cass' and Weiss' instanneous, interlocking responses, includes a quote from Sonny Rollins' Paul's Pal. Palmer assumes the baton, bulids the momentum further, then guides the flow into a closing unison.

Preminger describes the elegiac, medim-slow, not quite rubato My Blues for you as "a gospelly blues that I wrote in freshman year of college." After his achingly soulful melody statement, first Palmer and then the leader testify with a primal-yet-restrained quality on the elemental raw materials, evoking the ambiance of such recent collaborations as the albums Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground and Meditations on Freedom.

Weiss' pointillistic beats are a portal into Nashua, named for the New Hampshire city where Preminger, soon after returning to Boston, took a teaching job that "lasted about two weeks". The querulous tme hints at New England Rust Belt dystopia-Cass, Palmer and Preminger remain true to the melody in their solos.

Preminger wrote the Ornette Coleman-esque Walking On Eggshells after listening to an interview on National Public Radio "with somone who wrote an article how it's difficult to be a white person who's concerned about racial injustice, which he said is like walking on eggshells." He continues; "I started playing this, and then wrote an entire melody like it-the feeling was like skipping along, like walking on eggshells."

The date closes with Acknowledgment, no relation to the opening movement of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, but nonetheless vibrationally akin to the man Preminger calls "the very top as an improviser." "If you¡ve got 100 levels, Trane is on 100 and everybody else starts at level 60," Preminger says. "To me, Coltrane had the most incredible balance of technique and emotional artistry." After Preminger's bluesy rubato introduction, Cass begins a dialogue, Preminger recapitulates the simple melody, Weiss offers Rashied Ali-like ametric beats before morphing to 4/4 freebop at 3:30, leading to another elegant, forceful Palmer statement, and a closing Preminger solo, patient and intense.

"I don't know why I came up with the title," Preminger says. "Maybe it's acknowledging what's going on in my life-where I am, what my beliefs are, receiving acknowledgment. My style of playing is maybe an acquired taste, but I have a very honest way of performing, and a lot of energy. It's not commercial whatsoever. It's weird-I'm not out here touring that much, but I'm leaving a trail of work. Sure. I'd like to be appreciated for what I do. But I love making albums, and I love laying down my personal statement. I like the procces. I'm happy. That's most important."

Ted Panken

Playlist for Tom Ossana – The Thin Edge – February 28, MST 7:00 to 9:00p.m.

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