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Jazz Articles about Collin Sherman
Collin Sherman: Life Eats Life
by Dan McClenaghan
Collin Sherman, a multiple reedman, has a day job in Manhattan. But on nights and weekends, he sheds the work clothes and switches into his idiosyncratic original voice in the creation of music. Life Eats Life is a solo effort. He plays and records all the instruments in his living room for his albums. Then he overdubs it all together--an audio cut-and-paste affair. He is responsible for the crafting of the spooky, 1940-ish Noir and the exotic saxophone-over-drones outing String ...
Continue ReadingCollin Sherman: A Solitary Visionary in Jazz
by Robert Middleton
Collin Sherman is an outlier in the jazz world. He creates all his own music, plays every instrument, records everything himself, and rarely performs live. His approach is unconventional but deeply compelling, allowing him to produce music that defies easy categorization. In a conversation via Zoom, Sherman opened up about his journey, his creative process and the unique challenges of being a one-man jazz ensemble. I began by asking Sherman how he got started in music. “I started playing jazz ...
Continue ReadingCollin Sherman: Noir
by Dan McClenaghan
Making music is most often a collaborative affair. Big bands, duos, trios, quartets and quintets--take your pick. Miles Davis (or any other of your favorites) calls his guys into the studio or to the stage where they bump elbows and trade riffs, drawing their individual personalities out to form a collection of sound waves to craft a finished work of art. On the other hand, we have the solo outing. Alone at the piano, or with the guitar--or ...
Continue ReadingString Planes
by Dan McClenaghan
Collin Sherman takes the 'A' train to his day job in Manhattan. Billy Strayhorn, the writer of the tune “Take the 'A' Train" that was made famous by the Duke Ellington Orchestra, must be smiling. Do the seeds of Sherman's compositions germinate during these forty-five-minute rides? Possibly, though his music has no resemblance to Ellington's or Strayhorn's. Day job and train rides aside, Sherman creates his music in a home studio in a one-person endeavor via the overdubbing ...
Continue ReadingCollin Sherman: Organism Made Luminous
by Dan McClenaghan
The Covid pandemic slowed artistic progress for many musicians. Opportunities to collaborate became scarce; live music in front of an audience blinked out. However, the enterprising players out there found a way. File sharing and solo projects blossomed, and these—along with the relative affordability of home studio set ups—had an invigorating effect on musical creativity. If you cannot go out and play to an audience, you might as well stay home and create. But for multiple instrumentalist (primarily ...
Continue ReadingCollin Sherman: Suitable Benchmarks of Reform
by Dan McClenaghan
Multi-reedist Colin Sherman's thirteenth album, Suitable Benchmarks Of Reform, was made from the same template from which his previous twelve releases came into being—recording alone in his New York City apartment, recording the individual parts then layering each onto the next to make an ensemble sound. This, in the time of the arrival of the Covid virus, has become a more common practice; it is just that Sherman got a head start on the go-it-alone process. Call it ...
Continue ReadingCollin Sherman: Arc of a Slow Decline
by Dan McClenaghan
Music is typically a collaborative affair. A given number of players comes together and each takes a part in the shaping of a particular sound. Teamwork is the word. But sometimes a musician just has to go it alone and--in this technological age that allows such things--the recording then collaging and layering of sounds creates an ensemble work. Music lovers of a certain age may remember Paul McCartney's McCartney (Apple, 1970) as a groundbreaker in this style of expression.
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