Home » Jazz Musicians » John Esposito Discography
Tiger Tracks
John Esposito
Label: Sunjump Records
Released: 2020
Duration: 76:33
Views: 123
Tracks
1. Arri
Personnel
John Esposito
pianoAlbum Description
Second Sight was in its second year of existence when we returned to Woodstock’s Dreamland Studios to record our second album of original music. We had been performing the material in NYC area and Northeast US clubs and had arrived at a place of strength and flexibility that is hard to achieve without lots of performance. I was doing most of the writing but our live performances also included pieces by Dave Douglas and Jeff Marx. I regret we didn’t get to record some of Dave’s early compositions which were very challenging and intelligently tailored to the band members’ abilities. By this time, I was writing music intended to make use of and hopefully stretch everyone’s individual playing. However most of the horn harmonies were not written down but were either suggested by me verbally or often improvised spontaneously by Douglas and Marx who each had very distinctive voices and conversed with each other masterfully. The rhythm section had also developed to a point where the breath in the time as played by Allen Murphy and Jeff Siegel allowed the maximum amount of responsiveness to the nuances in the soloists’ statements as well as the ability to turn on a dime and move to other meters and tempos spontaneously. Every gig was both fun and a revelation. The songs never sounded the same from performance to performance. I’d like to bring your attention to the pieces Arrival and Departure which were intended to open and close the original version of the album which would not have included the three alternate takes for which there would have been insufficient room on vinyl. Arrival and Departure were spontaneously composed and performed by Fred Berryhill with multi tracking and panning intended to create the picture of a band of West African griots approaching from the distance, staying for a moment and moving on. It was unplanned before the session and Fred gamely rose to the occasion, delighted that we kept asking him to add more parts. We were equally delighted to hear the magic in every part he added. Fred is still a powerful player of multiple congas as you can hear on Marx’s Pressure Makes Diamonds as well as a great colorist using all kinds of other percussion instruments and his voice. You can also hear him on Second Sight: Flying With The Comet and Bob Murad’s The Observer, both on Sunjump Records. We felt that the music had evolved very organically from what we had been playing a year before on our Flying With The Comet record which was very well received by critics and fans and by Horace Silver who told me he heard the record, loved the writing and playing and asked if I would mind him hiring the band (minus me) for a US and European tour. I told him that I would be honored. Every musician in NYC tried to get on that tour when they heard Horace was putting a new band together and Douglas did end up on that tour. When our manager heard the tapes of Tiger Tracks with its percussion prelude/postlude, two short through composed interludes (Lor Fow Mountain and Great Doubt,Then Clarity) and harmonically complex, non symmetrically formed pieces ( Dai Yat Lo and Fu Jow Pai) he looked perplexed and said that we seemed to have made a Classical music record and he wouldn’t be able to sell it to a Jazz audience. He then resigned his position. The band stayed together for several more years until other priorities and other projects took over. We continued to stretch the music even more and performed quite a bit but finances never allowed us to record in the studio again. Happily, I have been able to connect with Douglas on several other recordings by Franklin Kiermyer and Eric Person. I also recorded with Marx and Siegel a number of times and was fortunate to do a series of concerts in Germany and Austria with them the year before Marx’s passing after a long bout with cancer. I still occasionally work with Murphy and Berryhill too. For the curious, Fu Jow Pai is named after the Chinese Kung Fu style I trained in for almost twenty years. I’m back at it. It’s a combination of Hung Gar and a less well known Black Tiger method of Shaolin boxing. It was passed down in China from an unknown monk at Hoy Hong Temple on Lor Fow Mountain to Wong Bil Hong, to Wong Moon Toy, to my first teacher Sifu Wo Look to my second teacher Sifu Eric Brugnoni. Dai Yat Lo is the first and most basic form or set of techniques. The music on Tiger Tracks is my thanks and acknowledgement of the profound connection between the physical, the spirit and sound that I learned at that school and from playing this music with these musicians.
Comments
Tags
Album uploaded by John Esposito
More Albums
Giveaway
Days remaining: 2
