NY drummer Harris Eisenstadt composes for his quartet with Jeb Bishop on trombone, Tony Malaby on tenor & soprano saxophones, and Jason Roebke on bass, recording live at a Jazzshares concert in The Parlor Room, Northampton, Massachusetts, in their second tour performing Eisenstadt's inventive compositions leading to strong, lyrical soloing with unexpected twists and turns.
Format: CASSETTE Condition: New Released: 2019 Country: USA Packaging: Cassette Recorded live at The Parlor Room, in Northampton, Massachusetts, June 11th, 2017, by Jared Libby.
"This recording, a document of a live concert, was originally supposed to have taken place on February 12, 2017. We'd been on the road for a week in Canada and had had cold but clear weather the whole time. That couldn't last. Sure enough, by the time we got to Kingston, Ontario on February 9, it was snowing peacefully. The snow ended up sticking. I remember sitting in my hotel room when Glenn Siegel, the presenter from Northampton, called. The forecast called for more and more snow, so we decided to cancel the February 11 gig and set a makeup date for a few months later. Jeb, Jason, Tony and I drove south from Ontario for hours until we finally got to Albany, halfway point to end-of-tour respective homes and airports and stayed the night in a hotel there. A bit dodgy, that snowy drive was.
On June 11, 2017, Jeb, Tony, Jason and I met on a warm June afternoon at the home of the Pioneer Valley Jazzshares presenters, Glenn Siegel and Priscilla Page, in Northampton, MA. Playing a Jazzshares concert always has a really lovely vibe, super warm and community-centric. The ticket model is such that the audience buys a season of shows in advance and, as a result, the room is full. Before the gig and after, collegial conversation, delicious food and drink are the norm. It's one of my very favorite gigs in North America for sure. The music on this recording crackles with that alive-ness and warmth. I know it sounds of a piece, but seriously, grab a plate of salad, roast some delicata squash and spread it with feta on good grilled bread, pour a glass of wine or beer, maybe invite a friend over, have a seat, and take a listen. That's pretty much how it happened that evening."-Harris Eisenstadt, Brooklyn, November 2018
"The eternal debate persists. Is Harris Eisenstadt primarily a drummer or a composer? He composes music for orchestra and chamber ensembles, yet he leads several jazz groups including Canada Day (a quintet and sometimes quartet or octet), the small large ensemble Recent Developments, and this quartet with trombonist Jeb Bishop, saxophonist Tony Malaby, and bassist Jason Roebke. Like the new breed of percussion leaders Tyshawn Sorey and John Hollenbeck, Eisenstadt eschews the hulking Art Blakey / Tony Williams / Elvin Jones approach to percussion. He prefers to assemble, as he does here with Old Growth Forest, strong musical voices and provide a skeletal frame for improvisers to build on.
As Eisenstadt is want to do with titles (Canada Day I, II, II, & IV and Golden State I & II), Old Growth Forest II follows Old Growth Forest (Clean Feed, 2016). The tune up commencement of "Needle/Seedlings" gives way to Malaby blurting and bleeding his tenor saxophone towards a melody. This clarity advances a playful gambol of music with Bishop's talking plunger opening a solo that finds Roebke and Eisenstadt busily scrambling behind. The reward here is the music's seeming lack of orchestration, which is a sleight of hand. Perceptive listeners understand the man behind the curtain (drum set) has set all of this in motion.
The success of this quartet is this quartet. Eisenstadt trusts the improvisational directions each player chooses here. Each direction serves the whole. The somewhat-blues of "Rustling" is fed by the organized clink clank rattle of drums and Roebke's pulse, which also feeds Bishop's trombone solo on "Pit And Mound." The remaing five tracks follow a similar model. Eisenstadt's compositions make possible an expanding conversation between players. Let's not call him a composer nor drummer, let's call him a jazz facilitator."-Mark Corroto, All About Jazz