Jazz Articles

Michael Formanek’s Ensemble Kolossus: The Distance

by Dan McClenaghan
February 21, 2016

Here's a surprise. Bassist Michael Formanek is probably best known for his two recent ECM Records dates, Rub and Spare Change (2010) and Small Places, a couple of modernistic quartet sessions featuring saxophonist Tim Berne, pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver. These are tight and intense sets, architecturally solid, free-like outings that may have helped bring Taborn and Berne into the ECM fold for their own leader slots on the label. With a modest--in terms of numbers--discography as a ...

Michael Formanek’s Ensemble Kolossus: The Distance

by Mark Sullivan
February 5, 2016

Jazz composers writing for large ensembles have often avoided the label “big band," going back to the Jazz Composer's Orchestra in the '60s, not to mention Sun Ra's Arkestra and the many Swing Era bands that called themselves orchestras. It's an understandable choice, given the unavoidable--and potentially limiting--stylistic associations that come with the big band name. Bassist/composer Michael Formanek playfully calls this 18-piece group Ensemble Kolossus: it represents a bold creative leap forward from his previous quartet recordings Small Places ...

Chris Gestrin / Ben Monder / Dylan van der Schyff: The Distance

by Tom Greenland
May 12, 2006

An elaborative collaboration, The Distance--featuring Chris Gestrin (prepared & unprepared piano), Ben Monder (eclectic guitar), and Dylan van der Schyff (percussion)--is an expansive set, demonstrating the instant and infinite affinity possible when like musical minds meet. Recorded at the 2004 Vancouver International Jazz Festival, the CD documents a fast and freely composed concert of chamber jazz.

The opening “Ferns, with Monder's spacious intro of fade-in quartal chords, kicks into “Treacle, a fast-paced note-fest of incisive legatos and descending scalar staircases, ...

The Distance Runner; World Sonic

by Abe Pollack
April 16, 2006

Dave Liebman The Distance Runner Hatology 2005

The Distance Runner is a record of expectations, or rather lack thereof. If you're familiar with Liebman's approach to composition and improvisation, you would think that 55 minutes of saxophone solos would sound like a re-recording of late-Coltrane works mixed with early 21st Century classical motifs. Instead we have the surprise of a child-like spontaneity. With every note bend and tone alteration, we can hear Liebman experimenting ...

Magic Numbers / The Distance

by Ty Cumbie
March 4, 2006

A new pair of releases teams New York edge-cutters with their north-of-the-border counterparts.

Quinsin Nachoff Magic Numbers Songlines 2006

Toronto-based reed player Quinsin Nachoff has one foot in jazz performance and the other in classical composition. While this combination can sometimes lead to a musical no-man's land, Nachoff manages to avoid stylistic malaise, largely by dint of the decidedly rockin' drum work of New York's Jim Black. A jazz trio, ...

David Liebman: The Distance Runner

by Chris May
February 24, 2006

A tour de force of spontaneous musicmaking and an object lesson in how to put prodigious technical facility at the service of the music, rather than something to be admired for its own mechanical and ultimately barren sake, master saxophonist Dave Liebman's The Distance Runner is from a solo concert recorded at the Willisau festival in '04. An entire album of solo saxophone music (with a brief flute interlude) might sound like hard work for the listener (and sometimes it ...

Chris Gestrin / Ben Monder / Dylan van der Schyff: The Distance

by Troy Collins
February 10, 2006

Tony Reif, the head of Songlines, conspired with Vancouver International Jazz Festival promoter Ken Pickering to organize a concert featuring invited guest guitarist Ben Monder playing in an improvised trio format with the established duo of percussionist Dylan van der Schyff and pianist Chris Gestrin. Van der Schyff and Gestrin have a history of playing together, but Monder was new to their musical axis. The concert was recorded and two trio improvisations from a rehearsal later that day were added ...

Chris Gestrin / Ben Monder / Dylan van der Schyff: The Distance

by John Kelman
January 11, 2006

Creative jazz festival promoters have the unique opportunity to bring together artists who have never worked together but share common ground. Such collaborations are inherently risky; still, this type of gamble can sometimes yield a festival's most memorable moments. While Canadian pianist Chris Gestrin and percussionist Dylan van der Schyff had worked together on Gestrin's Stillpoint (Songlines, 2002) and Trio (Maximum Jazz, 2003), neither had worked previously with Ben Monder.

Monder, based in New York, has emerged over the past ...

David Liebmam: The Distance Runner

by John Kelman
December 2, 2005

The Distance Runner is not saxophonist Dave Liebman's first solo recording--he's released a handful of them over his forty year career, including the exceptional The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner (CMP, 1985). But his latest release is something special, as it documents his first-ever live solo performance, at Switzerland's 2004 Willisau Jazz Festival--an entirely different beast. As anyone who has performed live will attest, it's one thing to get on stage with a group--no matter how ...

Going the Distance: March-April 2004

by Gregory J. Robb
March 8, 2004

We have instruments and we have the imaginations to use them.

Miles Davis was a boxing fan because he could relate to it in two ways: boxing (like jazz) is a remarkably honest sport, and boxing (like jazz) is a remarkably rough business. The work of great boxers, like the work of great jazz musicians, speaks for itself. Boxers and jazz players share a mutual mandate: transcending human limitation. Fight fans live for such resilience. Jazz fans are the ...