The Squid's Ear Magazine

Gonzalez, Dennis NY Quartet,

Dance of the Soothsayer's Tongue (At Tonic)

Gonzalez, Dennis NY Quartet, : Dance of the Soothsayer's Tongue (At Tonic) (Clean Feed)

Dallas based Dennis Gonzalez with three stellar New York improvisers in an oustanding set including the 6 part Arikanu Suite, live at Tonic, NYC in 2003.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Dennis Gonzalez -trumpets

Ellery Eskelin-tenor saxophone

Mark Helias-contrabass

Michael T.A. Thompson-soundrhythium, percussionist


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UPC: 5609063000948

Label: Clean Feed
Catalog ID: CF094
Squidco Product Code: 9107

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2007
Country: Portugal
Packaging: Cardstock Gatefold Sleeve

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"The reason why I like Dennis Gonzalez's music, is the combination of emotional expressiveness, open musical form, warmth of tone, his sense of free melody, and the absolute priority he gives to the music as the outcome of the whole band's performance, rather than using the band to demonstrate his own skills. Every Gonzalez album is a "band" album. And all the above together is not a minor feat. Add to that, that this band is not just a band, it consists of Ellery Eskelin on sax, Mark Helias on bass and Mike Thompson on drums, three stellar musicians who no longer need introduction. Because of all these excellent ingredients and characteristics, the music is immediately identifiable as his. Starting with "Reaching Through The Skin", Gonzalez kicks it off with solo trumpet, melodic, rhythmic emotional, to be joined by high energy complex drumming by Thompson, a duo format with which the album will also end. Thompson's drumming is one of the most typical features of this album, and at moments it gives the impression that he's leading and driving the music forward, of course in the central track "Soundrhythmium", wich is solo percussion, but also on the title track, and on the long "Afrikanu Suite" his role is decisive in creating the tension, accents and depth to the music, offering a perfect counterpart for Helias' sad or menacing bowing and Gonzalez melancholy lines. "The Afrikanu Suite" brings some counterweight to the trumpet/drums of the other tracks, by starting with a great sax and bass duet, with Helias and Eskelin opening their bag of technical skills to create one soundsculpture after the other, varying incessantly, while remaining coherent in their approach, leading towards a fragile sensitivity, preparing the ground for Gonzalez' sad trumpet, which evolves into a more free bop mode, dropping the rhythm somewhere in the middle for some tentative collective free improv, and when the rhythm comes back with a Latin twist, the audience applauds enthusiastically. I wish I had been at Tonic that night to watch this live performance. Needless to say that Gonzalez is one of my favorite artists of the moment. I like his musical vision, and the rare joint strengths of accessibility and creativity. This is without a doubt his best album since his Nile River Suite."-FreeJazz-Stef @ Blogspot


Get additional information at Freejazz-Stef @ Blogspot

Artist Biographies

"Dennis González, often credited Dennis Gonzalez (born 1954) is a jazz trumpeter, artist, and educator from Texas.

González' primary musical instrument is the trumpet (including B♭, C, and pocket trumpets), though he has also played drums, flute, synthesizer, and baritone saxophone. Allmusic describes González as "[a] talented trumpeter who has recorded a consistently rewarding string of lesser-known dates," whose "playing falls between advanced hard bop and free jazz."

The Penguin Guide to Jazz notes that González' recordings during the 1980s for Silkheart Records represented "part of a determined effort to wrest creative initiative back from New York and the West Coast." The Penguin Guide further notes that one of González' greatest achievements is having coaxed saxophonist Charles Brackeen out of retirement during the late 1980s, and that by the early 1990s, González "more than ever before... seems the heir of Don Cherry." González was also instrumental in double bassist Henry Grimes' return to performing and recording. Grimes' November 2003 appearance on González' Nile River Suite was the bassist's first official recording in more than thirty-five years.

During the late 1970s, González started the Dallas Association for Avant-Garde and Neo Impressionistic Music, or daagnim, at the suggestion of Anthony Braxton and Art Lande. The daagnim organization, which functioned both as a group of musicians and as a record label, was based on and named after the AACM.

In 1978, González began working for Dallas radio station KERA-FM, where he hosted a music program, Miles Out. He worked with KERA for 21 years, but left after the station had largely shifted from music programming to a news and talk format.

For several years during the 1990s, González retired from jazz performance and recording. In 2001, he formed a trio, Yells at Eels, with his sons Aaron (double bass) and Stefan (drums, vibraphone). In 2010, the trio recorded with Ariel Pink, appearing on the song "Hot Body Rub" on the album Before Today, and on a vinyl EP, Ariel Pink With Added Pizzazz. González's most recent offering with Yells at Eels is a collaboration with Fort Worth experimental drone rock outfit Pinkish Black Vanishing Light in the Tunnel of Dreams released May of 2020."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Gonz%C3%A1lez)
10/2/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"For the past thirty years Ellery Eskelin has been at the forefront of the global creative improvised music scene. Based in New York City, he has traveled widely performing, recording and amassing a very personal and iconoclastic body of work. And yet Ellery Eskelin has always remained deeply committed to the traditions of jazz and American music. Eskelin embodies this seeming contradiction with ease. He does not see jazz as a style or idiom but as a process. Further, a process of creative development that has great relevancy to our time. In this pursuit Eskelin consistently delivers to the listening public unadulterated, passionate music with no excuses and no apologies.

Ellery Eskelin (born 1959) was raised in Baltimore and began playing the tenor saxophone at age ten, inspired by his mother "Bobbie Lee" who played Hammond B3 organ professionally in the early sixties. In 1983 Eskelin moved to New York City and in 1987 began recording with the cooperative group Joint Venture which also began his exposure on the European international touring circuit. Soon after, Eskelin formed the first of many projects as a leader beginning with a trio comprised of bassist Drew Gress and drummer Phil Haynes followed by a short lived group featuring Joe Daley on tuba and Arto Tuncboyaciyan on bakdav drums and percussion. In 1992 Eskelin joined drummer Joey Baron's group, "Baron Down" (instrumentation of drums, trombone and saxophone), an experience that proved to be an important catalyst in his own work fostering an increased interest in new and unusual instrumentation. In 1994 Eskelin formed the group most often associated with him including accordionist Andrea Parkins and drummer Jim Black. To date he has written over 50 compositions for this group, each of which has been documented on a series of CD releases on the Swiss hatHUT record label. The band has toured regularly and performed hundreds of concerts in the US, Canada and throughout Europe during the past twenty years. Eskelin's most recent project is "Trio New York" featuring organist Gary Versace and drummer Gerald Cleaver. "Trio New York" takes a free approach to the great American songbook, bringing Eskelin full circle to his musical beginnings while addressing his varied musical journeys since then.

Along the way Eskelin has done a number of side projects including a group featuring guitarist Marc Ribot and drummer Kenny Wollesen dedicated to the music of Gene Ammons, improvisatory duos with Dutch drummer Han Bennink, an improvising ensemble consisting of strings, vibraphone and saxophone and most recently a group featuring Susan Alcorn on pedal steel guitar and bassist Michael Formanek. Over the years Eskelin has developed a number of other important associations with musicians such as Gerry Hemingway, Mark Helias, Sylvie Courvoisier, and Bobby Previte. As a side-person Eskelin has worked with a broad cross section of jazz, avant-pop and new-music figures such as organist Brother Jack McDuff, composer Mikel Rouse, guitarist Eugene Chadbourne, oud player and composer Rabih Abou-Khalil, drummer Daniel Humair and the pseudo-group "The Grassy Knoll" among many others.

Eskelin's recordings as a leader and co-leader (there are currently twenty) have been named in Best of the Year critics' polls in the New York Times, The Village Voice , and major jazz magazines in the US and abroad. He also appears on over fifty recordings as a side person. DownBeat Magazine named Eskelin as one of the 25 Rising Stars for the Future in its January 2000 issue ("...players who not only insure the music's survival but promise to take it to the next level") as well as including him in their Annual Critics Polls nearly every year since then. Eskelin was a nominee for the prestigious Danish Jazzpar award in 2003 and was the recipient of a Chamber Music America French-American Exchange grant in 2007 and in 2014 as well as a Chamber Music America New Jazz Works grant in 2009."

-Ellery Eskelin Website (http://home.earthlink.net/~eskelin/styled-5/)
10/2/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Mark Helias is a renowned bassist, composer and producer who has performed throughout the world for more than four decades with some of the most important and innovative musicians in Jazz and Improvised Music including Don Cherry, Edward Blackwell, Anthony Davis, Dewey Redman, Anthony Braxton, Abbey Lincoln, Cecil Taylor, and Uri Caine among many others. A prolific composer, Helias has written music for two feature films as well as chamber pieces and works for large ensemble and big band. His orchestra piece "Stochasm" was premiered by the American Composers Orchestra in June of 2011. Twelve recordings of his music have been released since 1984, his latest being "The Signal Maker" on the Intakt label. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, and SIM (School for Improvisational Music) in Brookyn, NY."

-Mark Helias Website (http://www.markhelias.com)
10/2/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

Mike T.A. Thompson is a jazz drummer known for groups Dennis Gonzalez NY Quartet, Dennis Gonzalez's Inspiration Band, Dennis Gonzalez's Spirit Meridian, Ken Filiano & Quantum Entanglements, Matt Lavelle Trio, Sabir Mateen's Shapes, Texture And Sound Ensemble

-Discogs.com (https://www.discogs.com/artist/1091516-Mike-Thompson-9)
10/2/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Reaching Through the Skin

2. The Matter at Hand

3. Dance of the Soothsayer's Tongue

4. Soundrhytium

5. Afrikanu Suite

6.   Part 1

7.   Part II

8.   Part III

9.   Part IV

10.   Part V

11. Archipelago of Days

Related Categories of Interest:

Clean Feed
December 2007
Improvised Music
Jazz
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
Quartet Recordings

Search for other titles on the label:
Clean Feed.


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