The Music of Gregg Hill

Perennial DownBeat Critics Poll winner, trombonist Michael Dease has embraced his role as a torchbearer for his mentors and the great jazz ancestors over his 15 deeply-swinging, state-of-the-art mainstream recordings. For The Other Shoe, Dease teams with the formidable composer Gregg Hill, expanding his rhythmic & harmonic palette with a flexible, in-the-moment perspective while remaining true to the sensibilities at his musical core. With the prodigiously talented pianist Geoffrey Keezer as a central foil, Dease brings along a wide-ranging collection of musicians, each specifically brought in for their unique outlooks and talents, including clarinetist Virginia MacDonald, Liany Mateo on bass, and drummer Colleen Clark, among others.

Perennial DownBeat Critics Poll winner, trombonist Michael Dease has embraced his role as a torchbearer for his mentors and the great jazz ancestors over his 15 deeply-swinging, state-of-the-art mainstream recordings. For The Other Shoe, Dease teams with the formidable composer Gregg Hill, expanding his rhythmic & harmonic palette with a flexible, in-the-moment perspective while remaining true to the sensibilities at his musical core. With the prodigiously talented pianist Geoffrey Keezer as a central foil, Dease brings along a wide-ranging collection of musicians, each specifically brought in for their unique outlooks and talents, including clarinetist Virginia MacDonald, Liany Mateo on bass, and drummer Colleen Clark, among others.

The Storm's debut album, self-titled and released in 1991 by Interscope, was produced by Beau Hill. It rose to #133 on the Billboard album chart, scoring two Mainstream Rock radio hits with the #6 “I’ve Got a Lot to Learn About Love” (which also reached #26 on the Billboard Hot 100) and the #22 “Show Me the Way”. Their follow-up album, Eye of the Storm, was recorded for Interscope Records in 1993 but never released by Interscope.

For anyone in their mid-teens in the mid-5Os, and into music, it had to be rock'n'roll - American rock'n roll. There was no British equivalent to the sound. In the UK, it was Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, The Platters, Alan Freed, Radio Luxembourg, Voice Of America. If the right people get to know about this and hear the quality, this will sell and sell.

Marion Brown - Afternoon Of A Georgia Faun (1970) {ECM 1004 rel 1996}
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© 1970, 1996 ECM Records | ECM 1004
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Saxophone

Difficult as it may be for younger listeners to believe, there was a time when ECM released adventurous improvised music. Back near its inception in the early '70s, the label issued a wide variety and decent number of challenging avant-garde recordings that represented some of the most forward-looking musical thinkers of the time. One of these was Marion Brown, who, at the time of this session, was about midway between his extreme post- Coltrane explorations and the luscious, down-home evocations of Georgia that he would create for Impulse! over the next few years. He gathered 11 musicians, including a couple from the then current Miles Davis Bitches Brew band (Chick Corea and Bennie Maupin), the then little-known Anthony Braxton, Andrew Cyrille, and the late great vocalist Jeanne Lee for two side-long, wide-ranging pieces.

Future Jazz is an interesting teaming of the Blue Note and Knitting Factory labels for a compilation of creative modern jazz (leaning toward the "outside"). The CD serves as a supplement to a book of the same name by music journalist Howard Mandel. The selections all come from 1990s releases, with the exception of Eric Dolphy's classic "Hat and Beard" (1964) and James Newton's rendition of "Black and Tan Fantasy" (1986). Better-known names like Dolphy, Cassandra Wilson, Don Pullen, and Pat Metheny are mixed with names that certainly should be as recognized, like pianist Marilyn Crispell, drummer Gerry Hemingway (both of the mid-'80s Anthony Braxton Quartet lineup), and the late saxophonist Thomas Chapin.