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Awakening

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Andrew Vogt

Label: Self Produced
Released: 2024
Views: 2,606

Tracks

Awakening; Wes' Waltz; Hammerspace; Dusk; Dark Blues; Bass Etude #1; Eleanor Rigby.

Personnel

Additional Personnel / Information

Shaun Johnson: trumpet (7).

Album Description

The long awaited, full length album from Chicago-based bassist/composer Andrew Vogt. This album features six Vogt originals, a modern jazz spin on a Beatles cover and a handful of Chicago's heavy hitters, including Christian Euman (drummer for Jacob Collier), Stu Mindeman (pianist for Kurt Elling) and Dustin Laurenzi (sax for Bon Iver). Releasing on Vogt's birthday with an accompanying live and streaming show at Fulton Street Collective in Chicago IL. These songs are seemingly from a bygone era at this point, but still have continued to resonate with me for years and I am still incredibly proud of how this all turned out. "Awakening" began as an exercise in writing rubato compositions, and the group actually recorded three separate versions all at varying tempos and instrumentation. While all takes were equally powerful (in fact, some may be released later), the tenor sax version with Dustin Laurenzi became the perfect opener to the album. It reminds me of a miniature jazz tone poem, and is best heard with coffee in the morning. "Wes' Waltz" flows seamlessly out of the final bars of the opener and I admit, at this point I can't remember if that was intentional or not! This piece was written far earlier however, in fact I started writing the first bit of the melody and chords while working on a... cruise ship around 2010 after hearing stories of a missing passenger. The melody and song was finished years later after hearing about the good news of a friend's newborn child and for this reason symbolizes the cyclical nature of life. This song was also pre-released last year to honor the passing of my grandfather, Howard Nantz, and to also remember the importance of new life. By definition, “Hammerspace” is a fan-envisioned extradimensional, instantly accessible storage area in animated, comic and game fiction. It is used to explain how characters can produce objects out of thin air. (Think about in Space Jam when Bugs Bunny somehow miraculously pulls a basketball out from his…pocket?). I remember hearing about this concept and wanting to write a piece that included random chords, spontaneously crashing in to interrupt the form of the song, seemingly “out of thin air”. Rajiv, Stu, Christian and Hans did a remarkable job not only capturing this idea, but navigating an extremely difficult solo section. "Dusk" was such a fun piece to create. It began as a simple lead sheet style tune, that I remember first bringing into Corbin Andrick's weekly jam session at Lilly's. Although it functioned wonderfully as such, I knew I wanted to do more with this one. So, I rearranged and expanded the song into what reminded me of a pop arrangement, back in the days before Logic and overdubs. We recorded an instrumental version, with tons of space for vocals and then I worked with the incredibly talented Sarah Marie Young on the lyrics. I think I had the first verse and chorus but Sarah gave it the perfect second chorus and closing verse. However, it still didn't feel finished. So I called another frequent collaborator Sharon Irving to write some spoken word poetry over the extended bridge section. She came back with something I never would have dreamed up in a million years! Once the words and lyrics were finished, the final cherry on top was the Atlys String Quartet. At that point I had been just beginning to write for them so this string arrangement holds a special place in my heart. This one is about as lush as it gets! "Dark Blues" is a nod to a former bandleader and bandmate of mine the multi talented, drummer extraordinaire Xavier Breaker. This song always reminded me of something he would write and actually includes members (Joel Ream and Rajiv Halim) of our old band "The Coalition" battling it out in an epic, odd metered jazz fusion landscape. This song was also pre-released and actually got picked up on Spotify's 2023 Fresh Finds Jazz playlist. "Bass Etude #1" is pretty self explanatory, something I wrote to help me warm up while practicing and serves as an intro into "Eleanor Rigby." Like many musicians, I am a huge Beatles fan and owe a lot to the Fab Four for getting me so interested in music at a young age. Probably one of their most covered songs, I still felt the need to add my contribution to the overwhelming list of covers. It features a beautifully expansive solo by Dustin Laurenzi as well as some great trading by all the horns towards the end vamp. I hope you enjoy listening to this album as much as I enjoyed putting it out!