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About Peter Epstein
Instrument: Saxophone, sopranino
Peter Epstein / Brad Shepik / Matt Kilmer: Lingua Franca

by Abe Pollack
Technology and musical development have always seemed to work in tandem. Reel to reel recording made delay effects and multitracking techniques possible. Laptop processing has allowed trumpets to sound like cellos and cellos to sound like Jimi Hendrix. But the most intriguing technological advance for music in recent years has been the introduction of the iPod. Once you have spent a day listening to Balkan folk songs, The White Album and Tower of Power on shuffle, genre" slowly goes the ...
Continue ReadingPeter Epstein/Brad Shepik/Matt Kilmer: Lingua Franca

by John Dworkin
Like what's being done by many creative musicians today, including Kenny Wheeler, Bill Frisell, and Brian Blade's Fellowship, the music and approach on Lingua Franca are better described as searching than the more common burning. Peter Epstein, Brad Shepik, and Matt Kilmer trade more in water than fire. This is not a value judgement, just a shift of intent and perspective. Though rooted in the jazz aesthetics of improvisation and group interaction, Lingua Franca is not jazz with a capital ...
Continue ReadingPeter Epstein Quartet: The Invisible

by Mark Corroto
Saxophonist Peter Epstein changes sound and form as needed for the different lives he leads. In one prior life he sits in a cathedral alone, playing for the gods (see this month’s review of Solus ), in another he wears a Downtown existence in Jerry Granelli’s Badlands. Then there’s his Portuguese folk/jazz (see review of Almas), Mid-Eastern music with Brad Shepik, then again his ECM chamber jazz work. His ability to morph makes him all things to most people.
His ...
Continue ReadingPeter Epstein: Almas/Solus

by Mark Corroto
My ‘what I did during summer vacation’ essay would begin simply enough. “I listened to jazz.” I guess you can call what I listen too, ‘jazz.’ But then again, when is jazz not jazz? And can a jazz artist make a non-jazz record? Certainly, ask Miles Davis (sorry), ask Keith Jarrett and Wynton Marsalis, both have been exploring classical music most of their careers. Without re-igniting the ‘what is/is not jazz’ argument I venture into two recent discs by saxophonist ...
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