Sextet Tour Begins! Tonight: Eugene w/Douglas Detrick
Posted on | April 14, 2010 | No Comments
Well, the weather is nice (huzzah!) and we’re all set to go southward. I just recently acquired (finally, about 10 years late) a CD player for my truck, so I don’t have to deal with the infernal iPod radio transmitter thing anymore. In celebration, I am burning a bunch of CDs to listen to, including this great tape I just found over at the WorldService blog of the great Ali Farka Toure with the very popular (at least in Mali) singer Khaira Arby, playing I believe at someone’s house! So, here’s a sample of the soundtrack to the first day of the tour (click to lsiten):
(Farka and Khaira – Side A Track 2)
Tonight we’re playing in Eugene (home of Mary-Sue Tobin, our alto/soprano saxophonist) with the Douglas Detrick Quintet. Douglas is a great trumpeter and fantastic composer who I recently met thanks to the glories of the internet. I got to see his jazz/classical chamber ensemble, the “AnyWhen Ensemble,” last Saturday at the Community Music Center here in Portland, they were on a short tour after a gig 2 weeks ago at John Zorn’s club The Stone in NYC! It was a fantastic concert, Doug’s compositions are really interesting and pleasantly epic and free-flowing, and the musicians were all excellent. I’m excited to hear his quintet tonight!
We’re playing at Sam Bonds Garage, a great multi-genre venue in Eugene, at 9 PM, followed by the Detrick Quintet. Have a listen to Doug’s stuff over at his site and we’ll see you down the road. Full details:
Wednesday, April 17, 2010, 9:00PM
Douglas Detrick Quintet
Andrew Oliver Sextet
Sam Bonds Garage
407 Blair
Eugene, OR
$1-$5 cover
(AO Sextet as 1947 family portrait. Photo by Maureen Oliver)
Thanks // Tour Next Week
Posted on | April 9, 2010 | No Comments
Big thanks to everyone who came out to our Sextet CD Release show last night at TaborSpace, we had a great time and it was a fantastic audience as well! Also thanks to the TaborSpace folks for providing such a great venue and piano (and coffee!)
It’s always interesting how tunes develop over time, and we’ve been playing many of the tunes in our book for over a year, some for even longer. When we pulled out our old classic “Szesc” yesterday night, I realized just how much faster we play it now than when I wrote it 5 years ago. Certainly this is not a surprising trend, but in this specific instance it was nice to actually be able to pull it off at that tempo after so many train wrecks back there in the past!
The newer tunes have come together really well too. I feel like we may be on the verge of getting tired of playing them, but we haven’t quite gotten there yet so they’re really tight and still full of energy. I do forsee some significant new repertoire for this band in the coming year, however.
I’m really happy to have the opportunity to take this sextet on the road after almost 5 years of playing together, and we’ll keep you posted on happenings as we make our way southward. The Medford Mail-Tribune has a nice preview of our show on Thursday in Talent (a small town between Ashland and Medford), here. We’re teaming up with some great bands in Eugene (Douglas Detrick Quintet) and San Francisco (the Nice Guy Trio), and we may even see some sun for a change as we head southward (though admittedly there is sun outside my window right now in Portland, though one never knows how long that will last…)
Anyway, for a refresher, here’s the tour schedule. Tell your friends! Happy weekend everyone…
Wednesday, April 14, 2010, 9:00PM
Douglas Detrick Quintet
Andrew Oliver Sextet
Sam Bonds Garage
407 Blair
Eugene, OR
$1-$5 cover
Thursday, April 15 2010, 8:00-10:00PM
Andrew Oliver Sextet
Avalon Bar and Grill
105 W. Valley Rd.
Talent, OR
$10
Friday, April 16, 2010, 9:00PM
Andrew Oliver Sextet
Darren Johnston’s Nice Guy Trio
BlueSix Acoustic Room
3043 24th St. (at Treat St.)
San Francisco, CA
CD Release Tonight!
Posted on | April 8, 2010 | No Comments
Well it’s arrived, our CD Release concert for the sextet is this evening, over at TaborSpace in SE Portland. This is really an amazing new venue in town, with a fantastic Steinway and a great “living room” vibe.
Brett Campbell wrote a really nice review of the new album over at Willamette Week:
[ELECTRIC JAZZ] With his Kora Band and Portland Jazz Composers [Ensemble], hard-working young keyboardist Andrew Oliver has become a mainstay of this city’s jazz scene. His high-energy second sextet release gets the precipitation percentage wrong, but just about everything else right.
82% Chance of Rain is an eclectic collection, but a year of honing these 10 tracks has allowed them to benefit from the variety of the composers’ well-integrated yet distinctive styles, rather than sounding like several different bands. Oliver’s own memorably melodic compositions (“Inattentive Attendant,” “800 Turtles,” “Biannual/Biennial”) tend to be fairly straight ahead, even playful (“Very Small Island”); throughout, he makes smart use of retro tech like the Fender Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric piano without sounding merely throwback.
Guitarist Dan Duval’s pieces (“Public and Republic,” “Only a Quality Lime for Eric Gruber #1”) unleash some crunchy electric-guitar excitement, while drummer Kevin Van Geem’s contributions (like “Bolivar” and the title cut) add an indie-rock vibe. And saxman Willie Matheis scores with a warm ballad, “I Am Yours.” Matheis (tenor and soprano sax) and Mary-Sue Tobin (alto and soprano saxes and clarinet) contribute soaring lines that herald the ascension of a generous, diverse band that can appeal to fans of new jazz as well as older genres like fusion and post-bop. BRETT CAMPBELL.
And, of course, you can check out the album over on the right side of this page, and CD’s are available at the OA2 site.
Thursday, April 8, 7:30 PM
Andrew Oliver Sextet CD Release!
TaborSpace (http://www.taborspace.org)
5441 SE Belmont (corner of SE 55th and Belmont)
Portland, OR 97215
$7-15 sliding scale
All Ages!
Thanks everyone!
82% Chance of Rain
Posted on | March 22, 2010 | No Comments
I’m happy to announce my sextet’s second album, “82% Chance of Rain,” out in April on Seattle’s OA2 Records. We recorded this one back in August of last year, and we’re really pleased with the result! I wanted this one to sound a little less “jazzy” than Otis Stomp, both musically and in recording technique, and Jason Powers over at Type Foundry Studio did a fantastic and very hip job recording and mixing the record to sound clean and “studio” on one hand while retaining a good amount of grit and punch. The tunes are diverse and really fun, ranging from my rather epic “Inattentive Attendant” to Kevin Van Geem’s hard rocking title track to Dan Duval’s “Only a Quality Lime for Eric Gruber,” our theme song. It’s structured in two “sets”, with the theme at the end of each, for a classic LP-style listening experience. (Yes, I live in Portland, land of hipsters who love LP’s…)
The album is up for streaming and download at Bandcamp, you can use the player below (or to the right, for that matter) to check it out, and I hope you’ll consider supporting our endeavors by purchasing a download. Physical copies are also available, you can order them at the OA2 page.
Meanwhile, we’ll be playing a CD Release gig in Portland at the unique TaborSpace on April 8 and hitting the road the following week for gigs in Eugene, Talent (near Ashland), and San Francisco. We’ll be sharing bills with some great local groups down there and we’re really looking forward to our first tour together! Here are the complete details, send a note to your friends down south and help us make it a success!
You can find us over at Facebook as well, right here.
Thursday, April 8, 7:30 PM
CD Release Show!
Andrew Oliver Sextet
TaborSpace
5441 SE Belmont (corner of SE 55th and Belmont)
Portland, OR 97215
$7-15 sliding scale
All Ages!
Wednesday, April 14, 2010, 9:00PM
Douglas Detrick Quintet
Andrew Oliver Sextet
Sam Bonds Garage
407 Blair
Eugene, OR
$1-$5 cover
Thursday, April 15 2010, 8:00-10:00PM
Andrew Oliver Sextet
Avalon Bar and Grill
105 W. Valley Rd.
Talent, OR
$10
Friday, April 16, 2010, 9:00PM
Andrew Oliver Sextet
Darren Johnston’s Nice Guy Trio
BlueSix Acoustic Room
3043 24th St. (at Treat St.)
San Francisco, CA
Cascades
Posted on | March 13, 2010 | No Comments
One of my favorite places to write music is on trains. Most recently I was taking Amtrak’s “Cascades” line back and forth between Seattle and Portland quite a bit last fall and had some quality time to work on new kora band tunes. I’m now happy to share with everyone the result, a new tune called, appropriately, “Cascades.” I went up to Seattle earlier in the week to record this tune for a grant application (more on that forthcoming, if it comes through…), in our favorite engineer Don Gunn’s little backyard studio, “The Office.” We were really happy with the results so I decided to put it up on Bandcamp as a “single” for you to check out. We’ll be recording this tune again in May, along with the rest of our second album, and it also serves as a little preview for our upcoming fall shows, including this coming Friday in Portland and Saturday in Seattle.
The tune itself is pretty fun, I had been playing with Loveness Wesa and the Bantus Band for a bit when I wrote it, so there’s certainly some elements of the “Shona heartbeat” 4-on the floor, as it were. I also wanted to explore A minor/C major on kora, which works well when tuned to the typically Malian “Sauta” tuning (basically F lydian). And of course my interest in and love of the electric bass continues, despite the absolutist promises of my 12-year-old self, and Brady certainly slammed the weirdly difficult basslines I wrote him on this one. Hope you enjoy! Use the player below or click on the image to go directly to the Bandcamp page, where you can download it for free, or if you are so inclined, name your own price.
Country Music and Authenticity
Posted on | March 12, 2010 | No Comments
Since before he even moved to town a couple years ago, I had gigs with electric/acoustic bassist Sam Howard on my calendar, thanks to our mututal friend Russ Kleiner, who moved to Portland from NYC a few years ago and convinced Sam to make the jump a while later. Since then I’ve had the great pleasure of playing in the Sam Howard Band, with him, Russ, and originally Chris Mosley on guitar, and more recently (since Chris moved back to Texas) the great Scott Pemberton.
A few months ago I went to hear Sam play and sing with a different group of his over at Bethel Lutheran Church where he explained his “coming out” as a country music fan. I was very happy to hear about this, I often rail at great length about the “jazz education establishment” and how it encourages homogeneous listening tastes, and Sam’s unabashed love for simple country tunes really comes through strongly in his compositions.
A few months ago we went into the studio for a couple days and had a great time making a new record, “The Gettin’ Place,” which is being released tonight at Jimmy Mak’s with the great Blue Cranes, fresh off the road, opening up. I’ll post a link when the album is available online, meanwhile enjoy these videos from the studio! You can also read a nice interview with Sam over at Oregon Music News.
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