(Press release)
Pianoless trios can sound shambolic, even with great players, as
if everyone is bailing furiously to keep the boat from swamping. Here, though,
the trio plays as a unit, with absolute confidence… He called a previous album
We Used To Dance. These guys still do. ★★★★
Brian Morton - DownBeat
The trio will be
celebrating their new release - The Bright Side - with a European tour in April
April 22 &
23 - Duc des Lombards (Paris, France)
April 24 - Intönne Club Cafe (Passau, Germany)
April 25 & 26 - Tubes (Graz, Austria)
April 27 - Pizza Express (London, UK)
April 28 - Seven Arts Leeds (Leeds, UK)
April 29 - Unity Jazz (Gothenburg, Sweden)
April 30 - Oslo Jazz Forum (Oslo, Norway)
May 3 & 4 - Tblisi Grand Conservatory (Tblisi, Georgia)
The Joel Frahm Trio is a new band featuring Frahm on tenor and soprano
saxophones, Dan Loomis on bass, and Ernesto Cervini on drums. The
Bright Side is their debut recording for Anzic Records,
and is the culmination of a musical partnership that has developed over the
course of many tours and recording sessions spanning the last decade.
Frahm first
encountered the chord-less trio format as a teenager, and says he was
"mesmerized by the music they created and hooked by the feeling of freedom
and space the “chordless” trio provided me as a listener.” He was part of
several bands that fit that description: In the 1990s, Matt Wilson’s
Quartet with Frahm and Andrew D’Angelo playing their musical version
of Abbott and Costello with Wilson and Yosuke Inoue facilitating the
antics on drums and bass, respectively.
The millennium brought a seven year trio residency at Bar Next
Door in Greenwich Village featuring Joe Martin on bass and Bill Campbell
on drums. There were many nights at Smalls Jazz Club and later at Wilson
Live featuring Frahm's trio with bassist and composer Omer Avital and
drummer Anthony Pinciotti, another band that continues to work
consistently. In fact, Frahm’s debut recording Sorry No Decaf was
initially envisioned as a trio CD before David Berkman was added on
piano. This recording marks Frahm’s return to the formative trio format,
this time as a bandleader.
The trio was
born at a masterclass at the University of Toronto, as an offshoot of Cervini’s
band Turboprop. In the ensuing years, Loomis and Cervini took the reins and
began to book gigs for the ensemble, and on their first European tour a
repertoire began to take shape, comprised almost entirely of recently penned
original songs by each member of the band. The music runs the gamut: from X-Friends,
Dan Loomis’ knotty re-imagining of the Klenner/Lewis standard Just
Friends, to Frahm’s title tune The Bright Side, which was
inspired by the opening riff of Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side.
Cervini contributes The Beautiful Mystery, a pensive and emotional
tone poem that contrasts beautifully with upbeat tracks like Frahm’s Beeline,
a new melody written on the chord changes of My Shining Hour.
The Joel
Frahm Trio is
dedicated to playing original music with humour, emotion, blues spirit and all
of the elements that people love about jazz. This record is the first
offering from a formidable band you’ll be hearing more from
soon. Also, you might be interested to learn that Frahm, a
20-year resident of the New York City jazz scene, moved to Nashville
mid-July.
Joel Frahm can be found on his website, Facebook, Instagram
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