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Patrick Zimmerli Ensemble Expansion (SGL 1530-2) with Patrick Zimmerli (tenor saxophone), Ben Monder (guitar), Stomu Takeishi (fretless electric bass), and Satoshi Takeishi (percussion)   Five years after the debut of his Ensemble on Songlines (Explosion, SGL 1508-2), award-winning New York composer-saxophonist Patrick Zimmerli returns with another radical re-examination of jazz orthodoxies. Like the earlier program, Expansion combines contemporary classical musical elements with a jazz feel and approach, and includes standards as well as original compositions. This time however Zimmerli has organized his thoughts in longer forms. Built on a drone, "Sand" was inspired in part by Hindustani classical music and the dense, steady-state textures of the Japanese Gagaku ensemble; it's an emotionally compelling and intellectually fascinating piece whose shifting inner complexities reveal themselves slowly (see Kevin Whitehead's liner notes for a guide to its organization, and then try to keep track of who's soloing when). "The Elements Suite" is probably the jazziest work Zimmerli has yet recorded: in contrasting/complementary sections, the Ensemble explore together the blues, ballads, and post-bop through techniques (purists might say distorting lenses) of chromaticism, extended harmony, and polyrhythm. In Monk's "Evidence" and Bronislaw Kaper's "Invitation" Zimmerli pays his respects to the jazz tradition directly: their more conventional (though still slightly off-kilter) swing and melodic/harmonic departures provide a point of entry to his transformed world, with its often wild leaps, shining textures, and deep moods. Throughout the record Zimmerli and his associates bring advanced performing skills and great intelligence to bear on the interpretive challenges he sets, producing highly polished, exciting, unique music that suggests new creative directions beyond labels. Born (1968) and raised in the New York area, Patrick Zimmerli received his B.A. in literature and music composition from Columbia College and his M.Phil and D.M.A. (1999) in music composition from Columbia University. He studied with Joe Lovano and has toured and/or recorded with T.S. Monk, Kevin Hays, Bill Stewart, and Don Sickler. His own CDs include Twelve Sacred Dances (Arabesque, 1998, featuring Ethan Iverson, Reid Anderson and John Hollenbeck) and Shores Against Silence (Arabesque, forthcoming). In 1993 he won the first annual BMI/Thelonious Monk Institute Composers' Competition, in 1995 he directed the Institute's Jazz Ambassadors, a quintet of past winners that toured Africa (CD on Jazz City), and in 1996 his Ensemble gave eight concerts at the Guggenheim Museum in conjunction with the exhibition Abstraction in the 20th Century: Total Risk, Discipline, Freedom. He has also performed contemporary classical pieces by Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Dolphy and others, created multimedia and video works and music for theatre, and since 1994 has been house arranger/orchestrator for Duotone Audio Group. Among his more than 50 compositions are a Piano Concerto (premiered in April 2000 by Ethan Iverson and the Metamorphosen string orchestra in Boston); a String Quartet; a Concerto for Tenor Saxophone and Orchestra; Waves, commissioned by the French jazz ensemble Kartet (co-led by Songlines artist Benoit Delbecq); and a suite for the Belgian 10-piece jazz/new music group Octurn (to be premiered in November).

Sand Evidence The Elements Suite: Fire/Earth Air Water Invitation