I feel that Golden City – saxophonist and composer Miguel Zenón’s sweeping suite inspired by the complex and promising history of the Bay Area – is a masterpiece.
Featuring a brilliant band with Zenón, Miles Okazaki, Matt Mitchell, Dan Weiss, Chris Tordini, Daniel Díaz, Alan Ferber, Diego Urcola, and Jacob Garchik, the album will be released August 30 via Miel Music.
Guitarist Miles Okazaki gathers an extraordinary cast of ten musicians to create Miniature America, a collection of 22 vignettes exploring the wonder of chance encounters and “found” compositions.
Available July 19, 2024 via Cygnus Recordings, the album offers a serpentine journey through a sonic landscape created by Okazaki using radical studio techniques and material improvised by Matt Mitchell, Jen Shyu, Anna Webber, Jacob Garchik, Fay Victor, Jon Irabagon, Ganavya, Caroline Davis, and Patricia Brennan.
“finding fresh joy, surprise and what he calls “thisness” in off-kilter musical geometry has long been Okazaki’s specialty.” – Alan Scherstuhl, The New York Times
“Okazaki is a wildly versatile musician, freakishly precise, but also full of emotion.” – Craig Morgan Teicher, The Paris Review
One of the most lauded drummers in modern jazz, Dan Weiss, releases his daring and compelling new trio album Even Odds – featuring longtime collaborators alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón and pianist Matt Mitchell – on March 29, 2024 via Cygnus Recordings.
“Undeniably virtuosic and progressive, Weiss works in unconventional ways.” – Filipe Freitas, JazzTrail
“[Weiss is] best known as a virtuosic, in-demand jazz drummer… and an ambitious, imaginative bandleader.” – Hank Shteamer, The New York Times
“[Grdina is] an accomplished free improviser and player with strong instincts for motivic improvising in the post-bop tradition… he crosses the borders of harmonic and rhythmic daring without much fuss.” – Will Layman, PopMatters
Vancouver-based guitarist, composer, and oud master Gordon Grdina is on a roll. After releasing two acclaimed albums in February, he returns on June 17, 2022 with two adventurous new trio albums, with the first featuring masters of improvisation Matt Mitchell on piano and Jim Black on drums,
release date: 03.12.2021 on Biophilia Records
“A fresh and riveting presence on the vocal-jazz landscape.” – Nate Chinen, JazzTimes
“ Serpa possesses a preternatural cool, injecting weightless sophistication and melodic grace into everything she touches.” – Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader
Intimate Strangers, due out December 3, 2021 via Biophilia Records, features vocalists Sara Serpa, Aubrey Johnson and Sofía Rei with pianist Matt Mitchell and synth player Qasim Naqvi, creating vivid soundscapes for stories from Emmanuel Iduma’s book A Stranger’s Pose
Album release concert Tuesday, December 14 at National Jazz Museum, Harlem
release date: 26.11.2021 via Pyroclastic Records
release date: 11.06.2021 via Pyroclastic Records
The recording and accompanying film showcase the band’s synergistic connection and exhilarating, alchemical mix of musical forms
5-stars. “Haitian traditions inspire the percussionist’s exhilarating hybrid of melodic drums, evocative vocals and fiery improvisation… Smith wanted the resources of traditional vocalists, highly melodic drummers and melody-instrument jazz improvisers to become
4-stars. “Smith brings a jazz sensibility, opening the band to exploration and excavation into the pieces he built from drum patters with new songs written by and traditional tunes woven in by Brevil…The results are inviting and engaging, playing to tradition without being beholden to it.” – Kurt Gottschalk, Stereophile
5 stars. “The pieces are all profoundly original…. simply extraordinary, innovative and important…infinitely beautiful and pure…. a truly rare work that – at these levels of quality – has never really been even imagined before.” – Vic Albani, All About Jazz Italia – Album of the Week
“I’ve been on the scene, and know a lot of people, but projects like this are the kind of thing you live for.” – saxophonist and MacArthur Fellow Miguel Zenón
With its remarkable merging of traditional Haitian Vodou with contemporary jazz and beyond, the groundbreaking album
release date: 10th of January 2020
Teaming Grdina with the limitless pianist Matt Mitchell and the playfully experimental drummer Jim Black, Gordon Grdina’s Nomad Trio refuses to set down stylistic roots throughout its debut album Nomad. Album Release Tour January 5-17, 2020 with stops in Seattle, LA, San Francisco, Vancouver, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Ann Arbor, Chicago and NYC’
“The prevailing ambience is one of dark mystery, but the ruggedness of Grdina’s tone makes for a palette of rich contrast.” – David R. Adler, JazzTimes (review of Think Like the Waves)
“[Gordon Grdina is] a player of unbridled musical ingenuity.” – Raul da Gama, World Music Report
