Swell, Steve presents

Planet Dream

Label: Clean Feed Country: Portugal

"In this present age of the history of humanity, there are few places left for a true utopia. The world has already experienced some of those ideal systems, but the results were tragic. Even in literature utopian thinking seems to have vanished. Only in music is there still a place to wonder, especially when it deals with spontaneous and non-hierarchical procedures. Musical improvisation is becoming the only possibility left to forge micro-societies of freedom and egalitarianism, without having to choose between the two to achieve good results.

That's what trombonist and composer Steve Swell had in mind with the project Planet Dream, "a sound world where everything is as it should be, where the acceptance of self, the acceptance of change, the acceptance of others and their music should come to us as naturally as the air we breathe". Those "others" are alto saxophonist Rob Brown and cellist Daniel Levin, each one with their own concepts and processes of music making. The trio established a kind of "social contract" which enables the music to be what it is here: highly creative, with no rigid boundaries, free-flowing, developed with the respect of each individual space, but at the same time collective and empathic. A sample of what the world could be if everybody wanted it, after all a very ancient dream. But take note: this isn't wishful music; it's really happening here. And that is very, very precious."-Clean Feed