The Squid's Ear Magazine


Levin, Daniel Quartet: Organic Modernism (Clean Feed)

Daniel Levin's quartet with trumpeter Nate Wooley, vibraphonist Matt Moran and bassist Peter Bitenc, modern and organic improvisation with incredible technique and aesthetic.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Daniel Levin-cello

Nate Wooley-trumpet

Matt Moran-vibraphone

Peter Bitenc-doublebass


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UPC: 5609063002126

Label: Clean Feed
Catalog ID: CF212
Squidco Product Code: 13958

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2011
Country: Portugal
Packaging: Cardstock foldover
Recorded on April 28th, 2010 by Woramon Jamjod at Roulette Intermedium, NYC.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Music may be an abstract art, meaning, as Stravinsky used to say, "nothing more than its own sounds", but when it's presented with a title like Organic Modernism, we have some food for thought.

The Daniel Levin Quartet makes music that is an expression of the present day post-post-modernist condition (this double "post" justified by the fact that the organized artistic movements are collapsing, including those of the so-called post-modernism, thereby giving room to a pulverized aesthetic reality with all imaginable concepts constellated freely). Here we have four musicians stating that the "modernism" factor is still in full effect. And why? Because this music is anchored primarily by the prototypical modernist musical genre of jazz, simultaneously incorporating a dizzying array of musical techniques, concepts, references, and aesthetic approaches, resulting in a very modern kind of modernism indeed.

The music presented here by Daniel Levin, Nate Wooley, Matt Moran and Peter Bitenc for the band's sixth cd emerges from the rich and fertile soil of regular and highly focused collaboration over the span of nine years. In other words, and as the music writer Art Lange mentions in his liner-notes, we find here the construction of a "system". It may be an open system, or a hybrid, but it's still a system, like jazz was 60 years ago. Brilliant."-Clean Feed



This album has been reviewed on our magazine:

The Squid
The Squid's Ear!

Artist Biographies

"Daniel Levin is "one of the outstanding cellists working in the vanguard arena" (All About Jazz), "ridiculously fluent, virtually overflowing with ideas" (New York City Jazz Record) and "very much the man to watch." (Penguin Guide to Jazz). No matter what setting he plays in, cellist Daniel Levin occupies a musical space bordered by many kinds of music, but fully defined by none of them.

"Demonstrating an impressive breadth of texture and contrast, the cellist Daniel Levin comes well prepared for a career in jazz's contemporary avant-garde." (Nate Chinen, The New York Times).

Elements of European classical music, American jazz, microtonal and new music, and European free improvisation all figure prominently in his unique sound. As critic John Sharpe observes in The New York City Jazz Record, "he invokes all manner of musics with prodigious skill: jazz, classical, improv, noise, vocal chorus. His technique is unquestioned and he revels in the physicality of the instrument. Those with an adventurous streak or interest in the outer reaches of the cello universe will find much to savor."

Born in Burlington, Vermont, he began playing the cello at the age of six. In 2001, he graduated with a degree in Jazz Studies from the New England Conservatory of Music, and arrived on New York City jazz scene shortly therafter. Since then, Daniel has developed his own unique voice as a cellist, improviser, and composer. Ed Hazell noted upon release of Levin's first record as a leader, "Cellist Daniel Levin is a major new voice on his instrument and in improvised music." He has performed and/or recorded with Billy Bang, Borah Bergman, Tim Berne, Anthony Braxton, Gerald Cleaver, Andrew Cyrille, Mark Dresser, Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, Tony Malaby, Mat Maneri, Joe Morris, William Parker, Ivo Perelman, Warren Smith, Ken Vandermark, and many others. Daniel is the recipient of a 2010 Jerome Foundation award."

-Daniel Levin Website (http://daniel-levin.com/about)
3/13/2024

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

"Nate Wooley was born in 1974 in Clatskanie, Oregon, a town of 2,000 people in the timber country of the Pacific Northwestern corner of the U.S. He began playing trumpet professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist, at the age of 13. His time in Oregon, a place of relative quiet and slow time reference, instilled in Nate a musical aesthetic that has informed all of his music making for the past 20 years, but in no situation more than his solo trumpet performances.

Nate moved to New York in 2001, and has since become one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the burgeoning Brooklyn jazz, improv, noise, and new music scenes. He has performed regularly with such icons as John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Eliane Radigue, Ken Vandermark, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, and Yoshi Wada, as well as being a collaborator with some of the brightest lights of his generation like Chris Corsano, C. Spencer Yeh, Peter Evans, and Mary Halvorson.

Wooley's solo playing has often been cited as being a part of an international revolution in improvised trumpet. Along with Peter Evans and Greg Kelley, Wooley is considered one of the leading lights of the American movement to redefine the physical boundaries of the horn, as well as demolishing the way trumpet is perceived in a historical context still overshadowed by Louis Armstrong. A combination of vocalization, extreme extended technique, noise and drone aesthetics, amplification and feedback, and compositional rigor has led one reviewer to call his solo recordings "exquisitely hostile".

In the past three years, Wooley has been gathering international acclaim for his idiosyncratic trumpet language. Time Out New York has called him "an iconoclastic trumpeter", and Downbeat's Jazz Musician of the Year, Dave Douglas has said, "Nate Wooley is one of the most interesting and unusual trumpet players living today, and that is without hyperbole". His work has been featured at the SWR JazzNow stage at Donaueschingen, the WRO Media Arts Biennial in Poland, Kongsberg, North Sea, Music Unlimited, and Copenhagen Jazz Festivals, and the New York New Darmstadt Festivals. In 2011 he was an artist in residence at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, NY and Cafe Oto in London, England. In 2013 he performed at the Walker Art Center as a featured solo artist.

Nate is the curator of the Database of Recorded American Music (www.dramonline.org) and the editor-in-chief of their online quarterly journal Sound American (www.soundamerican.org) both of which are dedicated to broadening the definition of American music through their online presence and the physical distribution of music through Sound American Records. He also runs Pleasure of the Text which releases music by composers of experimental music at the beginnings of their careers in rough and ready mediums."

-Nate Wooley Website (http://natewooley.com/about)
3/13/2024

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

"Matt Moran received a Master's degree in jazz composition from New England Conservatory in 1995. At NEC he studied with the visionary composer and multi-instrumentalist Joseph Maneri, and has continued to learn from Maneri through performances with him. Since moving to New York in 1995 he has performed both as leader and sideman, including billings for the Knitting Factory's What Is Jazz? Festival, the JVC Jazz Festival, the Panasonic Village Jazz Festival, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, and the Vision Festival, as well as leading tours in the U.S. and Europe.

Also active as a performer, teacher, and curator in the Balkan folk music scene, Moran plays traditional percussion with artists such as Lefteris Bournias, Raif Hyseni, Demetri Tashie, and other master musicians from the Balkans who have immigrated to New York. With Slavic Soul Party!, he sparked "Balkan Cabaret", a downtown music series for Balkan and Balkan-inspired music.

Moran currently leads the groups Sideshow and Slavic Soul Party! He is also active performing and recording with John Hollenbeck's Claudia Quintet, the Mat Maneri Quintet, Theo Bleckmann, Dan Levin, Nate Wooley, Kavala Brass Band, and Zlatne Uste Balkan Brass Band.

Vibraphonist and tunesmith Matt Moran "plays the vibraphone like a speed-chess master, always darting off into flurries of ingenious, unexpected activity" (Village Voice). He has performed and recorded with artists as diverse as Mat Maneri, Lionel Hampton, Combustible Edison, Ellery Eskelin, and Saban Bajramovic. Moran's sound is integral to an innovative group of New York musicians who blur the boundaries of composition, improvisation, and folk traditions."

-Matt Moran Website (http://www.mattmoran.com/bio.html)
3/13/2024

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


Track Listing:



1. Action Painting 5:54

2. Zero Gravity 3:00

3. My Kind of Poetry 7:25

4. Lattice 2:40

5. Kaleidoscope 3:30

6. Old School 9:35

7. Constellations 3:54

8. Furniture as Sculpture 2:31

9. Audacity 7:06

10. Expert Set 2:18

11. Wild Kingdom 3:56

12. Active Imaginaiton 3:53

Related Categories of Interest:

Clean Feed

Improvised Music
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
Staff Picks & Recommended Items
Nate Wooley
2011 Top 40
Free Improvisation
Quartet Recordings

Search for other titles on the label:
Clean Feed.


Recommended & Related Releases:
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