If you're familiar with All About Jazz, you know that we've dedicated over two decades to supporting jazz as an art form, and more importantly, the creative musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made All About Jazz one of the most culturally important websites of its kind in the world reaching hundreds of thousands of readers every month. However, to expand our offerings and develop new means to foster jazz discovery we need your help.
You can become a sustaining member for a modest $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky Google ads PLUS deliver exclusive content and provide access to future articles for a full year! This combination will not only improve your AAJ experience, it will allow us to continue to rigorously build on the great work we first started in 1995. Read on to view our project ideas...
Track review of "Oh, A Little Day Trip Around The Crunch"
Multi-reedman Matty Harris' double septet is a large ensemble endeavor, featuring many Los Angeles artists, including venerable woodwind ace Vinny Golia for a program brimming with numerous horns-based convergences, soulful proclamations, subtle melodic inventions and pieces often designed with embryonic buildups and burgeoning choruses. Other movements enact notions of a calm-before-the-storm stylization amid interweaving passages and accents. Harris and associates primarily reside on the outside realm of jazz, but it is not chaotic by any stretch. The band toggles between loose groove type improvisational tactics and brash proclamations with well-organized thematic opuses.
The fourth and final track "Oh, a Little Day Trip Around the Crunch," starts with contrasting horns statements that occasionally overlap, and they restructure the main storyline with alternating cadenzas and wide leaps. Moreover, the rhythm section announces its presence as the band works through capacious interludes and linear movements. During the bridge, the soloists mix it up with free-form patterns and whirling breakouts. Besides the cerebral implications the artists are obviously enjoying the session. At one point, they completely dismantle the piece, as though they tossed a completed jigsaw puzzle on the floor with the intentions of starting from scratch. Towards closeout they gradually stitch the primary motif back together. Indeed, it's an engaging set that unveils other niceties on subsequent listens.
Track Listing: Party Time; 10,000 Kimmys Gibbler; Cockapoo Army; Oh, A Little Day Trip Around
the Crunch.
Personnel: Matty Harris: soprano, straight tenor, sopranino saxophones, bass clarinet; Vinny
Golia: soprano, straight alto saxophones, contra-alto clarinet; Paul Novros:
soprano saxophone; Ryan Parrish: soprano and baritone saxophones; Joe Santa
Maria: soprano and sopranino saxophones; Louis Lopez: trumpet; Greg Zilboorg:
trumpet; Brandon Sherman: trumpet; Jacob Rosenzweig: contrabass; Nathan
Phelps: contrabass; Tim Carr: drum set; Michael Lockwood: drum set; Garett
Grow: Fender Rhodes; Maxwell Gualtieri: baritone guitar.
I was first exposed to jazz while learning to play chess with my uncles. They would play smooth jazz, and then switch up to more standard types of jazz. But, when they played Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, I was
hooked and I haven't looked back.
If you shop at any of the stores below, please initiate your purchase from All About Jazz. When you do, All About Jazz will receive a sales commission.