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Eneidi, Marco Quintet (w / Johnston / Finkbelner / Smith / Anderson): Wheat Fields of Kleylehof (Balance Point Acoustics)

A fiery and tightly woven 2004 quintet session led by alto saxophonist and composer Marco Eneidi, recorded before his move to Europe, with trumpeter Darren Johnston, guitarist John Finkbeiner, bassist Damon Smith, and drummer Vijay Anderson performing dynamic, sharply articulated compositions that balance exuberant improvisation with finely honed structure.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Marco Eneidi-alto saxophone, compositions

Darren Johnston-trumpet

John Finkbeiner-guitar

Damon Smith-double bass

Vijay Anderson-drums


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Label: Balance Point Acoustics
Catalog ID: bpaltd27027
Squidco Product Code: 36442

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2025
Country: USA
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded in the Fall of 2004, by Scott R. Looney. Mixed and mastered by Weasel Walters.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

Offend these people..."

.....said Franz West to Marco at an opening at a blue chip gallery while shoving a stack of Euros into his hand. Marco worked for him for a time when he moved to Vienna from Oakland. West and Eneidi were a great match in many ways. The world is a worse place without their dark, mischievous and hilarious viewpoints. They had a similar over the top, over-achieving approach to their work. My first real improvised music concert was a trio with Marco and Gino Robair. I went in right at the deep end and never looked back. Marco was a mentor for me, I basically apprenticed for him for years, helping him organize concerts and playing together often in all sorts of groups. He taught me the way Cecil Taylor's notation system works (as well as gviing me the opportunity to play with Cecil!) and many other things. I still use his turntable, a Technics SL-Q3, to this day.

Right around the time of that first trio concert, the Quiet Storm All Stars appeared: Aaron Bennett, Charles Sharp and John Finkbeiner. We played many shows together, sharing bills but rarely together. A short time later, the great bassist Adam Lane came to the Bay Area and Finkbeiner and Bennett were often in his bands. Adam subsequently moved to NYC and Lisa Mezzacappa showed up around that time; the All Stars began playing in her bands and made equally great but very different music. We all used to play in Marco's large groups and at a certain point this quintet came about.It was the only time I got to work with Finkbeiner in a small group. Marco had been to Europe to play a concert with Han Bennink but had not moved there yet. He wrote this fantastic quintet music and put this group together to play it."-Damon Smith


Artist Biographies

"Marco Eneidi (November 1, 1956 Š May 24, 2016) was an American jazz alto saxophonist. He was primarily associated with free jazz.

Eneidi was born in Portland, Oregon. His father worked for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and his mother was a paralegal. Eneidi and his family lived in Livermore before moving to Oakland, California. As a child, he took lessons with Sonny Simmons. He attended Mt. Hood Community College before earning a Bachelor of Arts degree from Sonoma State University and Master of Arts from Mills College. Later in his career, he studied North Indian classical music at the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, California.

Eneidi moved to New York City in 1981 to study with Jimmy Lyons. He started to play with Jackson Krall, William Parker and Denis Charles. In 1984, he was hired by Bill Dixon to teach at Bennington College. In the early-1990s, he recorded his first important dates as a leader, such as Final Disconnect Notice. He was hired by Cecil Taylor, with whom he played in Europe. Eneidi moved back to the West Coast in the late 1990s, notably playing with Glenn Spearman. In 2005, he moved to Vienna, where he ran weekly free improvisation sessions until his move to Mexico in 2015."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Eneidi)
7/15/2025

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

"Since settling in San Francisco in 1997, Canada-born trumpeter/improviser/composer/songwriter Darren Johnston has collaborated and recorded with an extremely diverse cross-section of artists. His interests rotate around composing instrumental music, writing songs, and performing all styles of jazz, experimental and purely improvised music, as well as traditional music of the Balkans, Greece, and Macedonia.

He has performed and/or recorded with luminaries such as ROVA Sax Quartet, Fred Frith, Myra Melford, Ben Goldberg, Matt Wilson, Mark Dresser, Marshall Allen, and many others.

As a composer, he has written for jazz and/or non-idiomatic improvising groups, big bands, string quartet, and even a multi-generational choir, with songs based on a collection of immigrant letters. He has written for dance companies such as Amy SeiwertÕs Imagery, Deborah Slater, Axis Dance, Robert MosesÕ Kin, Liss Fain, and others, as well as for dance films."

-Darren Johnston Website (http://darrenjohnstonmusic.com/)
7/15/2025

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

"John is an engineer and multi-instrumentalist. He has studied engineering with Myles Boisen, guitar with Morris Acevedo, Myles Boisen, and Richard Festinger, and musical drinking straw with Aaron Bennett. John has worked on records with Fred Frith, Crime, Knights of the New Crusade, Tango No. 9, Aphrodesia, Edmund Welles, and many others. He plays guitar in many bands, including Go-Go Fightmaster and Bait and Switch."

-New, Improved Recording (http://newimprovedrecording.com/?page_id=137)
7/15/2025

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

"Damon Smith studied double bass with Lisle Ellis and has had lessons with Bertram Turezky, Joëlle Leandré, John Lindberg, Mark Dresser and others. Damon's explorations into the sonic palette of the double bass have resulted in a personal, flexible improvisational language based in the American jazz avant-garde movement and European non-idiomatic free improvisation. Visual art, film and dance heavily influence his music, as evidenced by his CAMH performance of Ben Patterson's Variations for Double Bass, collaborations with director Werner Herzog on soundtracks for Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World, and an early performance with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Damon has collaborated with a wide range of musicians, including: Cecil Taylor, Marshall Allen (of Sun Ra's Arkestra), Henry Kaiser, Roscoe Mitchell, Michael Pisaro, Wadada Leo Smith, Marco Eneidi, Wolfgang Fuchs, Peter Brötzmann and Peter Kowald. After many years in the San Francisco Bay Area, and five great years in Houston, Texas working regularly with Alvin Fielder, Sandy Ewen, David Dove & Chris Cogburn, Damon will move to the Boston area in the fall of 2016. Damon has run Balance Point Acoustics record label since 2001, releasing music focusing on transatlantic collaborations between US and European musicians."

-Balance Point Acoustic Website (https://www.balancepointacoustics.com/damon-smith/)
7/15/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
"Vijay Anderson is a freelance drummer, bandleader, composer, and teacher who recently relocated to Brooklyn, New York. He has performed and recorded with Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalists Lynn Johnston and Vinny Golia; Bay Area composers/performers Ben Goldberg, Sheldon Brown, Graham Connah, Darren Johnston, Smith Dobson V, Lisa Mezzacappa, Aaron Bennett, Ava Mendoza, Hafez Modirzadeh and saxophonist/composer Marco Eneidi. He has worked extensively with bass player/composer Adam Lane as part of Lane's Full Throttle Orchestra, the Adam Lane Trio featuring Vinny Golia, and Adam Lane's Blue Spirit Band featuring Avram Fefer and Roy Campbell. He holds a MFA in music performance from Mills College and a BA in music performance from S.F. State.Anderson has composed and performed original scores for filmmakers Jeff Kao and Tim Hicks as well as for projects by the Facing East Dance Company. Other notable career highlights include performing with Connie Crothers, Virg Dzurinko, Daniel Carter, Roberto Miranda, Bobby Bradford, William Roper, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Darius Jones, Prasant Radhakrishnan, Paul Smoker, John Tchicai, Wadada Leo Smith, Herb Robertson, Steve Swell, Kenny Wessel, Ken Filiano, Garrison Fewell, Karl Berger's Stone Workshop, Steve Adams, Bishop Norman Williams, BJ Papa, the Bill Horvitz Expanded Band, Phillip Johnston, Joel Forrester, Mike Watt, Chuck Dukowski, and Slovenly Jr. (subbing for Rob Holzman).Anderson has performed at many venues in the Bay Area and beyond, including: Yoshi's, the Stone, Bruno's, Café Claude, the Comstock Saloon, Barbes, the Luggage Store, New Langton Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, the Bop Shop, the Hammer Museum, the Berkeley Art Museum, the De Young Museum, and Intersection for the Arts. He also has performed at many festivals including the Monterey Jazz Festival, the San Jose Jazz Festival, the Fillmore Jazz Festival, the San Francisco Alternative Music Festival, the North Beach Jazz Festival, Cimpfest 2011 in Villach, Austria, the Novara Jazz Festival 2012 in Novara, Italy, The 2013 VDU Jazz Connections Festival in Kaunas, Lithuania, The San Francisco Jazz Festival in 2014, and the Outsound Music Festival in 2016 and 2017.Anderson's recorded work can be found on Cadence Jazz Records, Clean Feed, CIMP, Pax Recordings, Edgetone, Evander Music, 3 Beads of Sweat, NotTwo, NineWinds, and NoBusiness Records. He additionally leads two of his own bands, the Vijay Anderson Quartet, and the Touch and Go Sextet. His first record under his own name, entitled "Hard Boiled Wonderland" was released in August 2010 on Nottwo Records. In 2012, Anderson received a travel grant from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation to take the Touch and Go Sextet to the Novara Jazz Festival 2012 in Novara, Italy. A recording of this concert was released in 2014 on the NineWinds Label.Recent work includes performing with Sheldon Brown's Blood of the Air, as well as various groups with saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh, including a quartet with bassist Mark Dresser and pianist/composer Diane Moser. Other recent projects include the Silverscreen Sextet involving luminaries from Los Angeles creative music scene as well the Adam Lane Trio featuring alto saxophonist Nick Lyons which toured the Russian Federation in 2017."-Vijay Anderson Website (http://vijayanderson.com/bio/)
7/15/2025

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


Track Listing:



1. Prelude 1:58

2. Part 1 11:34

3. Part 2 9:50

4. Part 3 7:16

5. Part 4 5:05

6. Part 5 9:35

7. Part 6 9:05

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Jazz
Jazz & Improvisation Based on Compositions
Free Improvisation
Quintet Recordings
New in Improvised Music
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