Recording

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Blue Note Records announces Sound Prints release date!

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JOE LOVANO & DAVE DOUGLAS ANNOUNCE APRIL 7 RELEASE DATE FOR THE DEBUT RECORDING FROM THEIR CO-LED QUINTET SOUND PRINTS

LIVE AT MONTEREY JAZZ FESTIVAL FEATURES TWO NEW COMPOSITIONS WRITTEN BY THE BAND’S PRIMARY INSPIRATION WAYNE SHORTER

Saxophonist Joe Lovano and trumpeter Dave Douglas have announced an April 7 release date for Live at Monterey Jazz Festival, the debut recording from their co-led quintet Sound Prints featuring pianist Lawrence Fields, bassist Linda Oh and drummer Joey Baron. The album features the debut of two new compositions written for the band by the band’s primary inspiration: Wayne Shorter. Sound Prints will be performing at Jazz At Lincoln Center in New York City on May 15 & 16 in The Appel Room as part of their Wayne Shorter Festival. Further tour dates will be announced shortly.

For almost twenty years, Lovano and Douglas have been prime moving forces in the jazz scene, their paths crossing often on stage and occasionally on record. Douglas appears on Lovano's 2001 Blue Note album Flights of Fancy: Trio Fascination Edition Two and they overlapped as members of the SFJAZZ Collective for three seasons during which the band performed the repertoire of Thelonious Monk, McCoy Tyner, and their mutual touchstone: saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter.

Sound Prints takes their inspiration from the music of Shorter – the band's name is a nod to his classic "Footprints" – however the quintet’s focus is on new original compositions by Lovano and Douglas, as well as new Shorter compositions in direct collaboration with the composer himself. The band is fueled by a desire to push the boundaries of their music as far as they can stretch, similar to the expansive role Shorter has played in jazz since his debut with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in 1959.

In the album’s liner notes Shorter exclaims: "Onward! Dave Douglas, Joe Lovano, Lawrence Fields, Linda Oh and Joey Baron!  It’s not often when a combination of musicians such as the aforementioned elect to immerse themselves in an explorative adventure without hesitation or reservation. May they continue forging ahead on the trail less trodden. Onward!”

"The defining trait of Sound Prints," wrote Nate Chinen in The New York Times in a 2012 review of their engagement at the Village Vanguard, "is the tangled crosstalk of its front line: an urbane, on-the-fly counterpoint brimming with crooked urgency, like a choice bit of dialogue in a David Mamet play."

In the summer of 2011 Sound Prints opened for Shorter's Quartet on a European tour. They weren't performing any of his tunes yet but time spent with the legend and his band made a big impact on the group. When Sound Prints appeared on the bill with Shorter at New York's Town Hall in June 2013 he presented them with the new scores of "Destination Unknown" and "To Sail Beyond The Sunset," two pieces commissioned by the Monterey Jazz Festival. "The music came handwritten - very detailed, very precise," says Douglas.

Sound Prints' debut album was recorded live at the Monterey Jazz Festival on September 21, 2013.  Lovano and Douglas contributed two songs apiece to the set and the Shorter compositions were given their public debut that day. "The recordings are the very first performances of the newly commissioned tunes," said Douglas. "We all were at a heightened state of paying attention. Shorter took a lot of risks exploring elements of change. It was such a high to play it for him." "The music moves from today into tomorrow," adds Lovano. "Wayne told us the melody was just a suggestion – tell your own story with it."

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"Present Joys" #5 in Francis Davis' Year-End List

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Francis Davis, writer for NPR's A Blog Supreme, coordinated the voting for the NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll. (See that list here.) Here's what he wrote about "Present Joys" in his own list:

5. Dave Douglas & Uri Caine, Present Joys (Greenleaf). The trumpeter and the pianist are so tuned into each other from having played in each other's bands for so long that hearing them duet is always an exciting prospect. What makes this encounter all the more special is the unexpected harmonic sophistication with which they approach humble melodies from the Sacred Harp (i.e. shape note) songbook, together with a few Douglas originals in the same vein.

See the entire post here.

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"Present Joys" makes Hank Shteamer's 2014 Jazz Top Ten List

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I'm not all that familiar with Dave Douglas's enormous body of work. I've enjoyed the handful of his records I've checked out during the past few years, and there are a few back-catalog titles I remember digging many years back (including the Booker Little tribute In Our Lifetime and the Tiny Bell Trio's Songs for Wandering Souls), but I'm no expert. That's even more true re: my knowledge of Uri Caine. But Present Joys immediately felt familiar and inviting to me, and it's stuck with me since its release over the summer. I think this is because it falls into a certain category of record that I have an affinity for—not just a horn/piano duo album, but one with a powerful unifying mood, a reason for existing.

Read the rest here.

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Greenleaf Music releases Ryan Keberle's "Into The Zone"

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Into The Zone represents trombonist and composer Ryan Keberle's first release on Greenleaf Music and features his band Catharsis with special appearances by veteran saxophonist Scott Robinson and Chilean-born vocalist Camila Meza.

The pianoless quartet Catharsis draws upon lessons learned as Keberle played alongside masters in a multitude of forms, including Sufjan Stevens, Maria Schneider, Darcy James Argue, Alicia Keys and Justin Timberlake.

“A young trombonist of vision and composure”
— The New York Times
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Greenleaf Music releases Matt Ulery's “In the Ivory”

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“In the Ivory” is bassist and composer Matt Ulery’s follow-up to his 2012 record “Wake An Echo”, named by NPR Music as one of the Top 50 Albums of the Year. This double-CD features pianist Rob Clearfield, drummer Jon Deitemeyer, violinist Zach Brock, vocalist Grazyna Auguscik and three-time GRAMMY®-winning new music ensemble eighth blackbird in a lush chamber setting.

Also, with every purchase of “In the Ivory” made before September 30th fans will receive a free one-month subscription to Greenleaf Music's innovative Cloud Player. This proprietary streaming player allows listeners access to the label's entire catalog on their desktop, phone or tablet.

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Mel Minter's review of Present Joys

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The prolific and shape-shifting trumpeter Dave Douglas teams up with longtime friend and collaborator pianist Uri Caine on Present Joys to explore the rude elegance and depth of feeling in the centuries-old shape note tradition, which, with its deceptive simplicity, might be a musical equivalent to woodcut visual arts.

The duo presents five compositions from shape-note tunebooks and five Douglas
originals that hew closely to the vein of that tradition. The very first track, A. M. Cayle’s “Soar Away,” with its stately, bucolic melancholy, sets the stage. Douglas adopts a vivid, rough-hewn tone on his horn that perfectly suits the material, and there’s an almost classical feel to the
lilting counterpoint conversation between the two players.

Read the full review here.

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Praise for Present Joys

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“4 stars “Alluring … a 2014 jazz highlight.””
— John Fordham, The Guardian/UK

Read what critics are saying about Dave Douglas' new record of duos with Uri Caine that explores the shape-note singing tradition:

“I felt smarter after listening to Present Joys. Along with pianist Uri Caine, Douglas’ approach on this record sounds like Nas on Illmatic or the Grateful Dead at their live shows. He opens a channel into the middle of his musicianship and just lets it all flow out without anything superfluous or presumptuous.” - Alex Marianyi, NextBop

“While Present Joys features a stripped-down instrumentation, the utterly in-sync duo of Douglas and Caine also reaches lofty artistic heights and resonances.” - Peter Hum, Ottawa Citizen

4 stars … “Trumpeter Dave Douglas continues his exploration of traditional New England music with this delightful and intimate duet album, featuring pianist Uri Caine.  Though contemporary in scope, each track reflects the sparse harmonies, dignified phrasing and sense of community of a bygone era.” - Mike Hobart, Financial Times

8/10 … “Quite extraordinary. The folk tradition through jazz. I suppose it’s easy to embrace the tendency of adventurous musicians, of any artists with a taste for the edgy, to move back to lyricism and tradition. I’m wary of my affection for this recording and for Be Still for that reason, in the same way that I hesitate to laud Coltrane’s Ballads album. But these records are not retreats of bold playing at all — they are an expansion of a great artist’s sensibility, a way the artist has found to dare himself to focus, to refine, to move in new ways.  Dave Douglas and Uri Caine are good enough to stand up to making ‘pretty’ music, even traditional music. They pass the test and come out still surprising us.” - Will Layman popmatters.com

“Spiritual music, solid as Shaker furniture and often as sober as a Quaker meeting, performed by two attuned virtuosos who have worked together in various configurations for more than 20 years.   In the closing ballad ‘Zero Hour,’ Caine’s gorgeously joyous response to Douglas’s more serious reflections create[s] a brand new world in five minutes and change.” - Richard Gehr, Wonderingsound.com