Recordings: Past and Future

Here are some updates on my myriad recording sessions. My quintet Ad Faunum, with Noah Kaplan (sax), Jacob William (b), Giacomo Merega (e b), and Luther Gray (dr) will be released later this year on Not Two. More information, such as the album title, release date, etc. will be announced. Stay tuned!

Bird Fly Yellow recently went into the studio to record its full-length debut. We spent a day at Trout Recording and had a very fruitful session. We will be re-entering the studio to mix the session within a month’s time, and we hope to release the album by next Summer, 2012.

Alban Bailly, it turns out, is not only a guitar wizard but a great home-recording engineer as well. He, guitarist Nick Millevoi and I recorded a fully-improvised trio session in Alban's basement in April and are very pleased with the result. We will be mixing this one ourselves, and we’ll see if we can get it released for public consumption in the near future.

This weekend, I will be meeting up with my good friend Jeff Kimmel to do a couple performances and record a duo session as well. Jeff, who recently saw the release of a trio album, tilting, with Jacob Wick and David Moré, is one of the best bass clarinetist-improvisers around, and putting a little something on tape with him will be a great pleasure.

Finally, I'll be recording with the Johnny DeBlase Quartet on June 26, which performed not long ago at the Highwire Gallery in Philadelphia. The recorded material will consist of Johnny's compositions and, of course, lots of improvising.

May Calendar: Super Message Body

This is how May is shaping up so far: Well.

May 7, 10:00: w/ Jeff Kimmel (bass clar), Marc Riordan (dr), and Brian Labycz (synth) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Also performing: Wingbridge.

May 8: Duo recording w/ Jeff!

May 9, 7:30: Duo performance w/ Jeff at Myopic Books, Chicago.

May 28, 8:00: Performance of a piece by Brad Henkel, "Shopping List for the World Ends" for 4 trumpets, 2 guitars, and narrator. Also featuring performances by Mariel Berger's quartet and Dan Peck (tuba). Show takes place at Jonathan Wood Vincent's UWS apt.: 201 W. 86th Street Apt. 806 (The Belnord), New York, NY

Follow them links!!!

The Summer

The summer! It's been a busy one. A quick update on things: Two small tours have taken place in June and July, and a couple recordings (one at the home of Joe Morris and another at the Bunker Studio) have been made. It's been a very enjoyable couple months, where music is concerned anyway. Now I must prioritize a bit. Firstly, at least one of my groups needs a website, and of course this has fallen by the wayside. It will happen, just not without a bit of orchestration and willingness to do the "biz" stuff. Okay. Now for planning a couple more mini-bursts of weekend tours in November and December with Bird Fly Yellow and a yet-unnamed trio from Philly, culled from the quartet Shot x Shot.

Keep your eyes peeled for more details about gigs, releases, websites, et al. And by the way, some of my music (including an unmixed version of a track from the aforementioned Bunker session) is now available on my SoundCloud page: soundcloud.com/moffjazz.

Bird. Fly. Yellow. Has Recorded an Album

I should have written about this a week ago, but something excellent has occurred – one of my bands, Bird. Fly. Yellow., went into the studio and recorded an album! What a thing! We went into The Bunker Studio in Brooklyn on October 6 at 11:00 a.m. Ten hours later, we had 41 minutes of hot jazz on our hands.

For those who don’t know, Bird. Fly. Yellow. is a quartet that consists of Dan Blacksberg, trombone; Dave Flaherty, drums; Bridget Kearney, bass; and me on the trumpet.

It was probably the most successful recording session I’ve had (I’ve had not many, but meh). The first time the band had recorded it was a bit of a failure. We got together in February and attempted a session in the basement of Dave’s apartment. It just didn’t work – Dan was sick with the cold, my face decided not to work properly that day, and the band was having an off day overall.

A combination of factors contributed to a successful session last week: 1. A comfortable studio environment, fostered in no small part by our engineer, Aaron Nevezie; 2. the fact that we had to pay for the studio time (the “this better be good” factor); and 3. being well prepared for the session.

We preceded the session with two gigs – one in Philadelphia, and one in Brooklyn. We played mostly the same material for both gigs, but the performances were surprisingly different. The first, in Philly, was loud, loose, fast, and wonderful. The second was more reserved and “straight-ahead” – good, but a bit rigid. We decided that we needed to loosen up more for the session – play more freely than the night before in Brooklyn, but not as aggressively as our night in Philly.

We definitely loosened up. It was a wild and wooly session – perhaps at times bordering on outrageous, but overall the music was very fun, inspired, and actually quite embraceable. We played with the right amount of slipperiness, which I’m particularly happy about.

Probably the most important decision we made was to play the session in a series of “live sets.” It was agreed upon that we should not go back to re-record songs until each set was completed. It worked. It took us almost one whole set to get settled into the studio atmosphere. By the second set, we felt very comfortable, more like a live band. We did a total of three sets, plus some extra takes of a couple songs.

I am excited to put this music out for public consumption. It might take a while, but we’ll see if we can get it released on a small label. I will let you know if and when this happens!