Matt Mitchell

Matt Mitchell – Oblong Aplomb (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · September 15, 2023 · Comments off

Expanding on pianist/composer Matt Mitchell’s 2013 duo album Fiction with Ches Smith is this double-duo release over 2 CDs, one CD with Smith performing on drums, gongs, percussion, vibraphone, glockenspiel, tam-tam & timpani, and one CD with drummer/percussionist Kate Gentile, performing Mitchell’s fascinatingly convoluted works that integrate composition with improvisation.

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Rudresh Mahanthappa with Adam O’Farrill, Matt Mitchell, François Moutin, Rudy Royston – Bird Calls (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · August 23, 2023 · Comments off

Inspired by his love of the music of legendary jazz saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker, Rudresh Mahanthappa pays homage to the late bebop innovator on 2015’s Bird Calls. It was purportedly while breaking down Parker’s performance on “Donna Lee” to help a student learn the infamously difficult song that saxophonist Mahanthappa came up with the concept of a different way to interpret Parker’s music. Taken in small, easily digestible bites, Mahanthappa began to hear Parker’s architectural bop motifs less as swinging, blues-based jazz and more as modern classical or even avant-garde music. Combining his own creative approach to jazz with Indian raga, funk, post-bop, and other eclectic stylistic elements, Mahanthappa wrote pieces loosely based on Parker’s songs or parts of solos. For example, “Both Hands” reworks Parker’s “Dexterity” into a roiling, machine-gun stream of sound, and “Talin Is Thinking” turns Parker’s classic bluesy ballad “Parker’s Mood” into a frenetic spiritual jazz workout. Furthermore, just as Parker was often backed by a quintet featuring a trumpeter like the great Dizzy Gillespie, Mahanthappa takes the same approach, bringing with him 2014 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Trumpet Competition third-place winner Adam O’Farrill along with pianist Matt Mitchell, bassist François Moutin, and drummer Rudy Royston. Only 20 years old at the time of recording, O’Farrill (the son of pianist Arturo O’Farrill and the grandson of legendary Cuban percussionist, and Parker associate, Chico O’Farrill) is an immensely gifted trumpeter with a robust, rounded tone and lithe improvisational style. Joining with the other members of Mahanthappa’s quintet, he brings an intensity and buoyant creativity to Bird Calls that effectively updates the classic Parker/Gillespie partnership. For his end, Mahanthappa, a brilliantly capable improviser blessed with a fluid, harmonically engaging approach to jazz, blazes his way through these songs, which are at once accessible yet boundlessly inventive. Ultimately, with Bird Calls, Mahanthappa has crafted an exuberant, expressive album that’s as fresh and surprising as the music Parker originally recorded. ~ Matt Collar

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Matt Mitchell, Kate Gentile – Snark Horse (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · June 27, 2023 · Comments off

Snark Horse is a book of highly-detailed one-bar compositions by pianist/composer Matt Mitchell and drummer/composer Kate Gentile — audaciously presented across six discs – that are designed to incite inventive, multi-directional improvisation. It is also the name of a revolving cast of musicians – including Mitchell and Gentile – who have performed this music in various combinations since 2013. Both Mitchell and Gentile’s work are characterized by their exacting nature. Mitchell’s prior release, Phalanx Ambassadors, was called by Popmatters “a high watermark for the new jazz… a breathtaking jawdropper from one of the best pianists and composers now working.” Gentile’s 2017 debut release, Mannequins, was described by The New York Times as “full of stuttering rhythms and teetering intervallic jumps; an array of textures – sometimes chiming, sometimes abraded – disorient you even as they deepen your listening.”

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Matt Mitchell – Phalanx Ambassadors (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · June 27, 2023 · Comments off

Phalanx Ambassadors is the latest release from pianist/keyboardist/composer Matt Mitchell, whom Will Layman in PopMatters calls “the most complete and well-integrated improvising pianist of the last 15 years.” He also called his prior release, A Pouting Grimace (Pi 2017), “brilliant and varied… animated by breathtaking compositional imagination and startling arrangements.” Phalanx Ambassadors similarly features works that burst forth with intricate detail, featuring precise execution of multi-layered rhythmic material, adventurous harmonic exploration and otherworldly melodies. While rigorously structured, the music also leaves ample room for intertwining improvisation.

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Tim Berne & Matt Mitchell – One More, Please (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · December 31, 2022 · Comments off

Tim Berne, pioneer of New York’s legendary “downtown scene”, and his long-time duo partner Matt Mitchell on piano release the album One More, Please – an impressive and refreshing example of the art of improvisation. The two virtuoso instrumentalists have worked together for more than ten years – including in Berne’s acclaimed band Snakeoil – and over this time have developed a distinctive language and musical depth in a dynamic musical relationship. Six of the seven tracks on One More, Please are written by Berne, with all of them opening doors to endless interpretation and development. “With this duo, there’s always a further possibility and always the courage to take it on and see it through,” writes Django Bates in the liner notes, and adds: “The deconstructions, reconstructions, explorations and extrapolations of great improvisors reconfigure our brains and fine-tune our ears, as you will discover here with One More, Please.”

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