Jazz Articles about Shot x Shot

Shot x Shot: Let Nature Square

by Budd Kopman
June 19, 2008

The cooperative quartet ShotXShot has most assuredly earned all of the acclaim for its first release, Shot x Shot (High Two Recordings, 2006), which seemingly came out nowhere, as well as this second remarkable recording, Let Nature Square. The former album was recorded live in a church and the music was designed to take advantage of the acoustics. While this album was recorded in a studio, it is closer to what the band really sounds like, since ...

ShotXShot: Let Nature Square

by Kurt Gottschalk
June 3, 2008

The ShotXShot formula is a simple one. It follows the Ornette Coleman model of group improvisation on set themes, although its music doesn't sound like Coleman's harmolodics. It has a rolling, mellifluous sound, without Coleman's sharp angles. And rather than the sax/trumpet front line of Coleman's classic quartet, it has the twin saxophones of Bryan Rogers and Dan Scofield. But group improvisation is important to the ShotXShot sound in a crucial way: simultaneous soloing gives it a full but casual ...

Shot x Shot: Let Nature Square

by Mark Corroto
May 16, 2008

The band Shot x Shot excels in the art of group improvisation. A term tossed about too often without consideration for the words, 'group' and 'improvisation.'

This, their second recording, follows the self titled 2006 live date from St. Mary's church at the University of Pennsylvania. It had a ghostlike sound, a sort of archeological remnant, with echoey vibrations bouncing throughout the church. The quartet, formed at Philadelphia's University of The Arts, is comprised of saxophonist Dan Scofield ...

Shot x Shot: Let Nature Square

by Troy Collins
May 11, 2008

Shot x Shot is an acoustic quartet comprised of twenty-something graduates of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA. Their sophomore effort, Let Nature Square, is their first studio recording, following their highly acclaimed 2006 live, self-titled debut on High Two.

Saxophonists Dan Scofield (alto) and Bryan Rogers (tenor) make up the effusive front line, with Matt Engle (bass) and Dan Capecchi (drums) forming a pliant rhythm section. All scene regulars, Scofield and Engle are members of ...

Shot x Shot: Let Nature Square

by Lyn Horton
May 4, 2008

A group of voices does not have to sound like a choir. In fact, a contemporary take on choral work might be one where each voice takes its own liberties, possibly in improvisation. Inherent in that process is joint collaboration and framing of an idea, in a perhaps unspoken agreement that permits a reasonable flow. Voices can also be instrumental. And it is the quality of their regulation within parameters of a straight-ahead freedom that delivers good music.

Let Nature ...

Shot x Shot: Shot x Shot

by Tom Greenland
July 18, 2006

Shot x Shot is a group of four young musicians from Philadelphia--Bryan Roger (tenor sax), Dan Capecchi (drums), Dan Scofield (alto sax) and Matt Engle (bass)--who play with a free-roaming, exploratory spirit coupled to a precociously mature sense of pacing and restraint.

Recorded in St. Mary's Church, this self-titled disc emits an ethereal ambiance, from the echoed finger-on-the-chalkboard effects of the first track to the reverberating silences of “Volzalisle," a freeform number with undulating phrases. “Bee Assassins," based on the ...

Shot x Shot: Shot x Shot

by Budd Kopman
June 20, 2006

From the very first notes of this debut album, it is abundantly clear that it's an important record, and these young men (the oldest is 26!) have that special something.

Jazz, or to use a term preferred by Bob Rusch of Cadence, “creative improvised music," is the epitome of existential artistic creation. The process yields coherent music that lives by its own rules and internal logic. Everyone understands the language of commonplace jazz that encompasses harmony, rhythm and structure, but ...