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Michael Formanek: Small Places
by Geannine Reid
Double bassist/composer Michael Formanek releases Small Places, his follow-up to his ECM debut as a leader, The Rub and Spare Change. The new album features the same band of long- time musicians consisting of: Formanek on bass, saxophonist Tim Berne, pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleavor's complex rhythm cycles. Small Places is a continuation of the creative direction the quartet's first release established with a seamless blending of composed material and improvisations through creative forms and pulses.
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by Hrayr Attarian
Bassist Michael Formanek's second release on ECM, Small Places, is an impassioned and gratifying album. Working with the same quartet as his first, The Rub and Spare Change (ECM, 2010), the music here has crystallized and matured further as the familiarity and camaraderie among the artists has grown. Although The Rub was freer and hence more challenging, Small Places is a bit more accessible without losing its edge. The centerpiece of the disc, “Parting Ways," is a ...
Continue ReadingMichael Formanek: Small Places
by Troy Collins
Small Places is bassist Michael Formanek's follow-up to 2009's The Rub and Spare Change, his critically acclaimed ECM debut as a leader. While Formanek's sophomore effort for the label features the same high profile sidemen, it differs in that the lineup rehearsed the material live before heading into the studio with producer Manfred Eicher, where every nuance of the working group's finely-honed rapport was captured in crystalline clarity.Seamlessly blending the composed and improvised, alto saxophonist Tim Berne, pianist ...
Continue ReadingMichael Formanek: Small Places
by John Kelman
It's no secret that pathological fans view every artist discovered as a new branch on an endlessly growing musical tree. It should come as no surprise, then, that labels--at least, those run by folks as pathological as the fans they hope to attract--operate with the same eye to discovery and expansion. ECM has, in its forty-plus year career, been all about continuous growth and interrelationship. He may be its primary producer and label head, but Manfred Eicher is clearly also ...
Continue ReadingMichael Formanek CD Release Show at Jazz Standard
by Sean Patrick Fitzell
Michael FormanekJazz StandardNew York, NY October 27, 2010 Bassist Michael Formanek celebrated the release of The Rub and Spare Change with two sets at the venerable Jazz Standard, October 27, 2010. It was noteworthy as his debut for ECM Records and first new CD in about a dozen years. Once an assiduous presence of the New York scene, in the intervening years, he's been focused as an educator at Peabody Conservatory, leading ...
Continue ReadingMichael Formanek Quartet at the Philadelphia Art Alliance
by Nick Millevoi
Michael Formanek QuartetArs Nova Workshop at the Philadelphia Art AlliancePhiladelphia, PAOctober 28, 2010 On October 28, 2010, bassist Michael Formanek brought his quartet to the Philadelphia Art Alliance to celebrate the release of The Rub and Spare Change (ECM). The album draws upon many of the strengths of the individuals and the group, providing strong evidence of Michael Formanek's skills as a composer, bassist, and bandleader. The music lends itself to being performed live, where, ...
Continue ReadingMichael Formanek: The Rub And Spare Change
by John Kelman
With a discography that's growing with each passing year--expanding into territories new to both the label and music in general--it's difficult to understand the need for some to apply a reductionist stance to the music of ECM, whitewashing it with descriptions like “melancholy," or “Nordic cool." One listen to bassist Michael Formanek's ECM debut, The Rub And Spare Change, quickly dispenses with these--and many other--mythic generalizations that simply cannot describe a label that, in its fifth decade and with over ...
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