Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » MOA: Maverick

7

MOA: Maverick

MOA: Maverick
Max Wild wears many musical hats: A jazz musician who plays alto saxophone, an instructor at one of New York City's hottest music production schools (Dubspot), and producer of his own original dance and other electronic music. Wild began to play the saxophone in his native Zimbabwe and earned his Master in Jazz degree from the Manhattan School of Music, where he also began to discover that his unique instrumental jazz, African and electronic perspectives might make him a difficult musical fish to catch. "Learning to embrace this feeling also gave me the freedom and courage to do things my way," he reflects. "I realized that my music didn't conform to a specific style or genre because I was coming to music from my own place."

"Transferring the powerful rhythmic drive from African music to an electronic dance context seemed like a logical move, and incorporating some of the melodic and harmonic movement from jazz also made a lot of sense to me," Wild suggests. "To me, that is Maverick."

Wild energetically swings his alto sax but (more than) sometimes buries it in Maverick's chattering electronic production, as happens in "My Name is MOA" and "Prelude," two duets with guitarist Jesse Lewis that seem overstuffed with electronics and beats. To much better effect, his solo piece "Take Me Higher" explores Wild's "love for dubstep and finding ways to incorporate my sax with it": Its beautiful melody sounds like someone's ache for their homeland but it lurches and stomps through several passages of sputtering, sizzling electronic funk, too. "Higher" culminates "In My Funk" where, joined by Jahaan Sweet on keyboards, Wild combines beat and hook to ignite a flickering, fluttering melody that's both itchy and scratchy, and sings out on alto with profound depth and soul. Lewis' guitar solo does, too.

The closing "Barbarian" is the only track that credits a complete band, an up-tempo melody upswept by African rhythms and percussion that make it sound full and bright. Wild's alto is produced to sound like a keyboard (because the keyboards are produced to kind of sound like horns), but you can tell when he's playing also from his soaring lines—he loves to cut his horn loose and fly!

Even though the musical "global village" seems to keep expanding while growing smaller, one suspects that Maverick remains one of the few releases if not the ONLY release to split its recording locations between Union City (New Jersey) and Zimbabwe.

Track Listing

My Name is MOA; Prelude; Dance Tonight (featuring Chiwoniso); Take Me Higher; In My Funk; Uncountably Infinite (featuring Jesse Lewis); Hands in the Air (featuring Jahaan Sweet); Debo; Barbarian.

Personnel

MOA
 

Max Wild: production, alto saxophone, vocals; Jesse Lewis: guitar; Chiwoniso: vocals, mbria; Jahaan Sweet: keyboards, vocals; Romain Collin: keyboards; Obed Calvaire: drums; Michael Olatuja: electric bass; Harold St. Louis: keyboards; Pedrito Martinez: congas.

Album information

Title: Maverick | Year Released: 2015 | Record Label: Wild Child Music

Tags

Comments

About MOA

Articles | Concerts | Albums | Photos | Similar

PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.