Wad Farnsworth

Now almost 15 years into her New York City life, South Korean pianist and composer Jihee Heo has thrived during her deep journey into the city's towering jazz piano legacy. Her studies in Amsterdam and at the Manhattan School of Music blended experimental jazz with classical and bop, but the rich connection she discovered with drummer Joe Farnsworth and bassist Alex Claffy several years ago awakened sounds she's had stored away since she first encountered jazz. Now a steady presence in New York's clubs, this trio's journey is documented on Flow, which was, appropriately enough, recorded by Maureen Sickler at Rudy Van Gelder's famed studio in Englewood, NJ. Joining the trio for two tunes is the alto titan, Vincent Herring.

Ernest John Moeran was born in London but grew up in Norfolk and had strong ties with Ireland. While still a student at the Royal College of Music he was inspired by a performance of Vaughan Williams’s Norfolk Rhapsody that seemed “to breathe the very spirit of the English countryside”, and was soon collecting folksongs for himself. Moeran’s transcriptions were taken from English and Irish traditional singers with both rural and seafaring backgrounds, rescuing music and words both entertainingly earthy and sublimely beautiful which would otherwise have died with the artists who performed them.

Detroit-bred trumpeter & composer Anthony Stanco is a 5th generation Italian-American, steeped in the tenets of Black American Music: blues, bebop, and the progressive fire that fuels modern jazz. In his sound, the guidance of Dizzy Gillespie, Lee Morgan, Clifford Brown, and Miles Davis, as well as his close mentors Marcus Belgrave and Rodney Whitaker, is evident and clearly celebated. Full of joyous, vibrant discoveries, "Stanco's Time" announces not only a trumpeter entering his primetime, but also suggests the idea of traveling back to New York's 52nd Street circa 1955, with fresh, fiery sounds billowing out of clubs, marking a monumental cultural revolution. Along with his quintet - guitarist Randy Napoleon, pianist Xavier Davis, Rodney Whitaker on bass and drummer Joe Farnsworth - Stanco deftly avoids the trap of repertory imitation and hero worship by imbuing his originals and arrangements with life, fire and relevancy. "… The emotional source of each of Stanco's tracks is always something incredible that speaks to places we've all been, a place we've all shared."

Now almost 15 years into her New York City life, South Korean pianist and composer Jihee Heo has thrived during her deep journey into the city's towering jazz piano legacy. Her studies in Amsterdam and at the Manhattan School of Music blended experimental jazz with classical and bop, but the rich connection she discovered with drummer Joe Farnsworth and bassist Alex Claffy several years ago awakened sounds she's had stored away since she first encountered jazz. Now a steady presence in New York's clubs, this trio's journey is documented on Flow, which was, appropriately enough, recorded by Maureen Sickler at Rudy Van Gelder's famed studio in Englewood, NJ. Joining the trio for two tunes is the alto titan, Vincent Herring.