PJCE Audio
Posted on | November 18, 2009 | 2 Comments
Yes, I’ve been swamped with much activity lately, as usual, and have been very slack about updating here. I will make yet another effort to get it together! I’ve been in the studio this week with the excellent Sam Howard Band, we’re finishing up recording a new full-length album for Diatic Records this afternoon. It’s been really fun, especially working with Scott Pemberton, a true guitar wizard!! That album is due out in February, more info on that coming soon. Meanwhile, that band will be playing alongside the Ben Darwish trio December 4 at Jimmy Mak’s, so mark your calendars for that one, it will be a fun show.
The fall Portland Jazz Composers’ Ensemble concert was a blast, we played over in Northeast at Redeemer Lutheran Church, a great space with very clean acoustics (especially for a church), and it was really well recieved. The repertoire was a bit more subdued than in recent concerts, but it was nice and “seasonally appropriate.”
The personnel was:
Mike Hankins, Brooks Barnett, Tree Palmedo, trumpets
Dave Bryan, Nick Sweet, Doug Peebles, trombones
Lee Elderton, Gus Slayton, Willie Matheis, Mieke Bruggeman, saxophones
Andrew Oliver, piano; Kyle Williams, guitar; Bill Athens, bass; Kevin Van Geem, drums
We started out with Gus’s great tune “Deep Fjords”, which we sort of butchered the first time we played it, but which was really nice and epic this time, with a great solo by Lee Elderton (click to listen):
Next was a tune by JW Davis, who was the first person not acquainted with anyone in the band who just contacted us through our website with a piece to be performed. That was really cool and we enjoyed playing his tune “Just Me,” which was based off some Monk voicings that he transcribed, always a good source of inspiration! Solos by Nick Sweet, Willie Matheis, and Mike Hankins:
Just Me (That’s Who Loves You)
Stephen Conolly, a guitarist from central Washington who I met while visiting some friends out at Berklee in Boston, came to town to conduct his arrangement of a tune by Nick Sweet. It was great to have him there, we interpreted it much differently than the first time we performed it as well, this was certainly an improvement. Solo by Nick:
Next was my good friend Dan Duval’s rather epic piece that he wrote for us, inspired by the great minimalist pioneers (Cage, Reich, etc.). Featuring myself, Willie Matheis, and lots of great through-composed stuff:
After that, we took a brief intermission, followed by a piece sent for us all the way from Australia, by Rafael Karlen, who I met at the Banff Workshop in May. He’s a great and very thorough composer, and we took a stab at his tune “Handmade Book”. This one features Kyle Williams on guitar:
Next was my tune “28 Days”, named after some sort of record that was set this year in Seattle for consecutive days without rain. I wrote this originally for the Seattle Jazz Composers’ Ensemble, a somewhat similar project headed up by Michael Owcharuk, but re-arranged it for our group. Featuring Tree Palmedo on trumpet:
Kyle Williams offered a tune excerpted from a soundtrack he wrote to a movie by Salvador Dali. It was really nice and breezy, and features Bill Athens, Gus Slayton, and Kevin Van Geem:
We finished up, as we often do, with a piece by Sam Howard. This was a bit different than his last two, as it was co-written with Lindsey Stormo, a great vocalist who joined us for the performance. It’s very “Northwesty,” in fitting with the theme of the group:
Overall a great performance, probably our best to date – even though we only played eight pieces, I am starting to think that it’s better to play fewer pieces better, rather than trying to cram in a lot of under-rehearsed music. Thanks again to everyone who continues to make this endeavor a success, and we’re really excited for next year, when we’ll start out by performing in February during the Portland Jazz Festival, followed by some other exciting performances in the works!
Back to the grindstone for me, finishing up some new Kora Band tunes today, as well as continuing to book the May tour for Tunnel Six, a sextet I co-founded up at Banff, we’ll be touring throughout Canada in the spring, so watch out!
Hope everyone is having a good week. Back on Friday with the resurrection of the “Post Colonial African Groove of the Week!”
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November 18th, 2009 @ 10:05 am
[...] at Andrew Oliver’s blog is a wrapup of the fall concert with audio. Check it out here. See you in [...]
November 19th, 2009 @ 1:31 pm
Awesome, thanks for the kind mention – I can’t wait to start writing the next one for the festival gig!