Jos Bowen - piano
Greg Twombley - saxophones, flute and clarinet
Pepe Gonzalez - bass
Ken McNair - drums
CMCD-224 Released March 1, 2006
Nearly three years after his last choral klezmer extravaganza, composer and pianist Jos Bowen returns with an album of all original jazz compositions featuring his all-star band from Washington DC. Ken McNair is still blazing on the drums and Pepe Gonzalez is always a monster on bass. Greg Twombley is a new voice, both lyrical and driving, playing a variety of instruments.
Acoustic jazz goes both global and urban: the compositions and moods range widely from red hot Latin to an ECM-ballad and from a soulful shuffle to a waltz ("Naomi's Waltz") that tries to answer the question, “what if Chopin were Jewish and played jazz?" “Bodrum Blues" is a trio performance and combines melodic and harmonic material from Bodrum, Turkey (where it was composed) with the blues and a hip hop groove. Despite the diversity of styles and genres, all of the music is performed acoustically with the same standard set of jazz instruments.
The title and many of the tunes take inspiration from Rumi, the Sufi poet born in Afghanistan in 1207:
“The night is not crowded like the day. The night is filled with eternal love. Take this night tight in your arms as you hold a sweetheart. Remember the water of life is in the dark caverns Don't be like a big fish stopping the life's flow by standing in the mouth of a creek"
PERFORMER BIOS
Greg Twombley - Saxophone-Flute-Clarinet
Greg Twombley studied at the Eastman School of Music, and with Eddie Daniels, Ramon Ricker, Dick Oatts and Rayburn Wright. He has played with Dizzy Gillespie, Louie Bellson, Clark Terry, Natalie Cole, Maureen McGovern,Bob Hope and at The White House, the State Department and Wolf Trap. He has performed for members of Congress and has recorded a recent jazz composition project for Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic. He is a distinguished music educator and three-time recipient of the Virginia Governor's Outstanding Music Educator Award.
Ken McNair - Drums
Ken McNair studied at the University of Pittsburgh with Nathan Davis and played with the late Eddie Harris, the late Ted Dunbar, Johnny Griffin, James Moody, Frank Foster, and Hank Crawford before joining Walt Harper & All That Jazz. He is now a mainstay on the Washington DC scene, has recorded with the late Grover Washington Jr., opened for Average White Band and Tower of Power (during their “Souled Out" Tour), and played with Kirk Whalum, Ron Affif, Larry Coryell, and Monty Alexander.
Pepe Gonzalez - Bass
Born in Spain, now living in Washington, DC, Pepe Gonzalez is a performer, producer, arranger, and teacher. He has performed nationally and internationally for the past 25 years with the legendary artists within the jazz, Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian idioms including Maria Rodriquez and her Latin Jazz Orchestra, Jeannie Bryson, Pepper Adams, Dorothy Donegan, Clifford Jordan, Delfaeyo Marsalis, Clark Terry, Giacomo Gates, Byron Morris and Unity, Hilton Ruiz and Wycliffe Gordan. He has performed on tours in the Carribean, Spain, France, Greece, Italy and the Soviet Union.
Jos Antonio Bowen - Piano
Jos Antonio Bowen became Dean of the School of Fine Arts and a Professor of Music at Miami University in 2004. After teaching at Stanford University, first as the Director of Jazz Ensembles (1982-87) and then for the Humanities Special Programs and the Afro-American Studies Program, he became the Founding Director of the Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (C.H.A.R.M.) at the University of Southampton, England in 1994. He returned to America in 1999 as the first holder of the endowed Caestecker Chair of Music in the new Program in the Performing Arts at Georgetown University. Dr. Bowen received degrees in Chemistry (BS), Music (composition) (MA) and Humanities (MA), before deciding to complete a joint Ph.D. in Musicology and Humanities all at Stanford.
He has written over 100 scholarly articles in the Journal of Musicology, The Journal of Musicological Research, Performance Practice Review , 19th-century Music, Notes, Music Theory Spectrum, the Journal of the Royal Musical Associations, Studi Musicali, the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and many others. He is the editor of the Cambridge Companion to Conducting (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and he received a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship for work on his book: The Conductor and the Score: A History of the Relationship between Interpreter and Text from Beethoven to Wagner. He is currently working on the Smithsonian Anthology of Jazz (6-CD set) for the Smithsonian Institution.
In over 30 years as a jazz performer, he has appeared in Europe, Israel and the United States with Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Liberace, Bobby Shew, Ed Shanussey, Peter King and many others. His compositions and playing are featured on numerous recordings. He has written a symphony (which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 1985), a film score, and music for Hubert Laws, Jerry Garcia and many others. His Jewish music (published by Transcontinental Music) is also widely performed and includes a Jazz Shabbat Service (which has received over 70 performances around the world). Other awards for his compositions include the Hubbell, Popular and Standard Awards (from ASCAP), the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts, the Bell T. Richie Prize, and the Koret Israel Prize. He received a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship, is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) in England, and on the National Preservations Recording Board for the Library of Congress.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Jos Antonio Bowen
11039 Tibbs St.br> Dallas, TX 75230br>
PHONE: 214.368.4488br> EMAIL: [email protected]
For more information contact All About Jazz.
