Hello from Villa Paradiso, in upstate New York where spring is in full bloom.

 

I'm excited about my new group, US Five, and our Blue Note debut, Folk Art, which has just been released.

 

We recorded Folk Art last December after a week at the Vanguard.  All nine tracks are my originals and on Folk Art, I play tenor saxophone, straight alto saxophone, alto clarinet, tarogato, aulochrome, and percussion.  My collaborators in Us Five include James Weidman on piano Esperanza Spalding on bass and Otis Brown and Francesco Mela on-drums and cymbals.

 

We're exploring a wide spectrum of "colors, sounds, and feelings," organizing the flow into passages for quintet, quartets, trios, duos, and solos within the unit, exploiting to the fullest the various rhythm section possibilities afforded by the two-drummer format.  Not surprisingly, this approach is the catalyst for some very creative musical dialog.

 

The music comes out of our individual roots, and those combinations emerge in the music. Francesco Mela is from Cuba; Otis Brown is a real New York drummer; Esperanza has beautiful lyrical approach; the way James conceives jazz music, blues, gospel, and freer forms. It's an ongoing study on how to play together with mutual respect and an egoless approach.
 
It's the first time I've put together a group with people who aren't my generation, who haven't totally developed their approach, who are experiencing things for the first time. Everyone has fresh eyes and fresh ears, and this gives me ideas when I put together compositions that I had never played with anyone else before. Everybody is on their toes. It reminds me of when Tony Williams and Herbie played with Miles as real young cats, or when McCoy Tyner first played with Coltrane.
 
I've embraced Coltrane's music for a long time, and I've had a chance to explore his free-flowing harmonic-melodic late-period ballads with Saxophone Summit. That and the spiritual feeling of playing lately with McCoy and Hank Jones gave me a strong grounding in my compositional approach for this date.

 

Folk Art projects future music for me, a way of playing together with people in an honest, organic way.

 

Please check it out!

 

Joe Lovano

My site has more on Folk Art 

Saxophone maestro Joe Lovano has enjoyed a stellar career recording for Blue Note Records, launching into new territory with different sized ensembles from album to album while rarely retreading the steps of his past musical adventures. Whether he's been in a trio fascination, a quartet marvel, or a killer nonet setting, Lovano has upped the ante with each album, not only furthering his reputation as one of the world's premiere saxophonists but also forwarding jazz expression with imaginative might.

With his 20th album for Blue Note album, Lovano delivers a milestone recording with Symphonica, a bold and beautiful orchestral project recorded largely in concert with the WDR Radio Big Band and Orchestra from Cologne, Germany. With music arranged and conducted by the big band musical director, Michael Abene, Symphonica marks the first time in Lovano's career that he has recorded an entire album with a full symphony. All of the music consists of Lovano compositions save for one piece (Charles Mingus's "Duke Ellington's Sound of Love," where Lovano sustains his tenor saxophone lines to hover over the haunting melody). In that sense, Symphonica stands as a full-sound, best-of collection that traces the breadth and plumbs the depth of Lovano's career.

Hailed by the New York Times as "one of the greatest musicians in jazz history," saxophone giant Joe Lovano has distinguished himself for some three decades as a prescient and path-breaking force in creative music. He has earned praise not just for his compelling saxophone tone and improvisational ability, but also for his forward-thinking presentation of new musical ideas and ensemble concepts. Streams of Expression, Lovano's 18th album for Blue Note Records, unites disparate themes from his own discography, not to mention jazz history as a whole.

Streams of Expression reunites Lovano with the great composer, conductor, and musicologist Gunther Schuller (their first collaboration was Rush Hour, Blue Note, 1995), and draws upon everything from the cool school to late-era Coltrane, offering a holistic take on jazz, present and future. The album is comprised of two extended, multipart pieces (Streams of Expression Suite, Birth of the Cool Suite) and three stand-alone tunes ("Blue Sketches," "Buckeyes," "Big Ben") and features an augmented incarnation of Lovano's nonet from the albums 52nd Street Themes (2000) and On this Day . . . At the Vanguard (2003). Three of the tracks showcase Lovano in a trio setting, recalling his Trio Fascination series, regarded as a contemporary classic.