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Phillip Golub
Phillip Golub (b. 1993) is a pianist, improviser, and composer based in Brooklyn, NY. Originally from Los Angeles, he creates highly original and expressive music, grounded in but not constrained by his engaged practice in jazz, creative music, and new music. Technically audacious, Phillip sublates sound worlds as distant as Thelonious Monk and Alexander Scriabin, the ars subtilior and Cecil Taylor, negating conventions, yet building on traditions.
Phillip’s recordings have been praised as “cutting edge” (Sequence 21) and containing “a profound concept […] triumphant […] fascinating” (Pop Matters). As a player, he has been described as bringing “assurance, charisma, and infectious enthusiasm” (Steve Smith) to his performances and manifesting “exhilarating energy, charisma, and a canny ability to transform the complex and even inscrutable into sophisticated yet joyful noise” (Allmusic.com).
Phillip is in demand as a pianist on New York’s jazz, creative music, and world music stages, performing and recording regularly across numerous sub-genres and scenes, such as Layale Chaker, DoYeon Kim, Lesley Mok, Anna Webber, Jacob Shulman, and Seajun Kwon, at venues such as Roulette, National Sawdust, and many other Brooklyn mainstays.
Phillip has an unwavering commitment to honoring the genealogy of jazz. He has played numerous times with Cecil McBee and worked extensively with Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding on their opera … (Iphigenia). He continues to play a crucial role in the Shorter estate, digitizing and preparing manuscripts for publication. phillipgolubmusic.com
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Akusmi, Nelson Patton, arc rae, hackedepicciotto, Grateful Dead and more
by Lawrence Peryer
Episode 17 spends its first half putting things together: drone loops rebuilt into full arrangements, improvised cello reassembled into composition, a century-old fiddle tune rebuilt with dance and harmonics, before heading to Los Angeles for a band that builds the same unresolved tension by hand, live, in a room. The back half turns from a microtonal utopia and a rhythmic ambient interior to a straight line from Peter Gabriel through Bruce Hornsby's brand new record featuring Bob Weir and into ...
Continue ReadingPhillip Golub: Partisan Ship
by Mike Jurkovic
In a lot off ways, it is a game of catch-up listening to Brooklyn pianist/improvisor/composer Phillip Golub once he kick-starts the oddly titled Partisan Ship into high gear with Loyalty Oath," a piece of mad musical fiction that holds attention in place with its octopi rhythms and runaway melodies rushing in all at once. Partisan Ship is oddly titled because Golub, an unapologetic polymath far out on the progressive spectrum, and his juiced and jazzed up cohorts--clarinetist and ...
Continue ReadingPhillip Golub / Lesley Mok: Dream Brigade
by John Sharpe
Pianist Phillip Golub and drummer Lesley Mok explore the porous boundaries between form and freedom on their exploratory debut as Dream Brigade, blending spontaneous composition with intuitive interplay in a wide-ranging program of six spontaneous inventions and two dives into the Great American Songbook. An in-demand side person, Mok can be heard in the blue chip ensembles of pianist Myra Melford and reedist Anna Webber, as well as leading the group The Living Collection. Golub's resume includes principals ...
Continue ReadingPhillip Golub: Recording The Impossible Piano
by Lawrence Peryer
Brooklyn pianist Phillip Golub is taking his music in bold new directions.Phillip's new project, Loop 7 (greyfade, 2025), is a set of minimalist compositions performed on a piano tuned to 22 notes per octave instead of the usual 12. Working with producer Joseph Branciforte, he's created something that lives between acoustic chamber music and studio art.It's a groundbreaking approach--Phillip's performance was captured on a special Yamaha piano in a unique way he tells us about. The ...
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Phillip Golub: Abiding Memory
by Vincenzo Roggero
Pressoché sconosciuto dalle nostre parti, il poco più che trentenne Phillip Golub è musicista assai attivo nella sempre effervescente scena newyorchese. Eclettico, trasversale, dalla curiosità onnivora si muove con disinvoltura tra jazz, intrighi elettronici, libera improvvisazione e musica da camera, come testimoniano dischi e concerti. Per Abiding Memory si è scomodato un gigante del pianoforte come Vijay Iyer, scrivendone assai lusinghiere note di copertina. E l'ascolto delle dieci tracce conferma appieno l'eccellenza del risultato, perché Abiding Memory è ...
Continue ReadingPhillip Golub, Irene Schweizer, and Bill Frisell
by Jerome Wilson
This show features recent releases by Phillip Golub, Sam Anning, and Bill Frisell as well as older work from the San Francisco String Trio, Irene Schweizer, and King Pleasure. Playlist Henry Threadgill Sextett I Can't Wait Till I Get Home" from The Complete Novus & Columbia Recordings of Henry Threadgill & Air (Mosaic) 00:00 Ezra Weiss Sextett Don't Need No Ticket" from Before You Know It (Roark) 00:58 Riverside Demigods" from The New National Anthem (Greenleaf Music) 10:30 ...
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