No Boat
…Human Feel (GM, New World, and Songlines) and Pachora. “[Bleckmann’s] utterances can seem like an aural Rorschach of Arabic tongue clicking, Japanese machinery noise, and bird chirping, while still remaining unaffected and accessible. No little credit is due to his companion Monder…Together they take you to rich new places worth getting to.” — And…
Echo Painting
…started playing and the direction that the solos took was completely up to the musicians…This band certainly has a lot in common with the sound of the Peggy Lee Band with the horns (Jon and Brad are in both ensembles), but adding violin and pedal steel creates another dimension. The Film in Music band feels quite different from both of these in that…
The Distance
…et there’s a cumulative sense of continuity and flow. The composed pieces tend to hover on the brink of freedom, while the improvs are fascinating as process but also strong on form. The particular character of this trio’s music-making involves a balance between speed/dynamism and a more inward, meditative feeling, between expansiveness and concentr…
Interpretations of Lessness
…cal chamber music without in any way sacrificing the jazz feel (not to mention the beauty) of his composing and arranging, or depriving himself and his musical collaborators of opportunities for improvisation. This suite of pieces inspired by Samuel Beckett’s short prose work “Lessness” establishes an off-kilter yet richly appealing sound world that…
The Snowghost Sessions
…nvolved it did leave a lot of options for how to mix. For example: do we keep the drums ‘natural’ or try to do something interesting with them in the mix.” Some of the tunes do have an almost ambient feel, while others take the music into avant-jazz territory, but it’s mainly a subtle record of grace and beauty (Horvitz calls it “textural and contem…
Golden State
…r the group or a subset of the group to break free of the composed materials…Rhythmic counterpoint is a big part of all the writing I do, no matter how small the group…No matter how non-overt it may end up sounding, I’m always exploring the African concept of ostinato – meaning non-symmetrical repeating patterns rather than symmetrical rhythms…A cla…
Babkas
…in terms of knotty compositional proclivities, Tim Berne…[but] Babkas is far from merely exercising imitation, and this full program of lengthy jaunts and short, condensed sound nuggets reveals plenty of depth…The ideas fly furiously, thick arrangements unleashing a deluge of phrases and turns. Toe-tapping, finger snapping is out…bone-cracking, min…
Fratelli
…an) and their experience playing many kinds of jazz, from free to bop to funk to jazz-rock. The tunes are often complex, but the process of refinement involves bringing out their emotional depth as well as wit, and rhythmically these players can really dig in: check out the live cut “Spokane” for a demonstration of why BABKAS has been called “unbeli…
No Difference
…abandon is held within fairly tight structures, at least compared to the explosive, noise-drenched Gord Grdina Trio: “I wrote specifically for these musicians and what I could hear the entire group sounding like. In the Trio we have worked out a way to take the littlest structure and constantly reinvent it and go in any direction at the drop of a d…
Inroads
…d talked down to. I wanted the music to continually move, feeling free but clearly directed. “Compositionally this also came out of the work I’d done with Gary Peacock but in a very different way. We worked a lot on composition being a distilled idea that is the germ that sparks improvisation. I wanted to see what would happen if I composed the deve…
