A
rapidly rising force on the New York scene who also leads The Elvin Jones
Project, Feinberg rechristened his band Humblebrag for the new album because
the eponymous track that closes the album marked a new phase of his musical
development. He's deadly serious about the music, but isn't particularly
interested in making any grand statement about the state of the art form.
Recorded live in-studio in Atlanta, Georgia, Feinberg's follow up to 2011's
critically hailed debut With Many Hands captures the searing energy and
unbridled imagination of smart young musicians deep in conversation with each other.
"Naming tunes and bands, people want to sound so cool and edgy and
mysterious," Feinberg says. "But it's just one little voice in the
world."
Humblebrag's
voice is wide-ranging, perpetually curious and not averse to funk and fusion.
Writing the title track, Feinberg was thinking about his experiences playing
with Re-Animation, trumpeter Tim Hagans' riff on the early electric music of
Miles Davis. Built on a hypnotic five-note motif, the piece features dramatic
orchestration, and the roiling but dynamically sensitive trap work by Gully,
best known for his work with Christian McBride's funk-inflected
electro-acoustic band. "Rock has always been a big part of my life,"
Feinberg says, "and this is my contemporary version of that."
If
there's any chest-pounding going on in Humblebrag it's over the superlative
quality of Feinberg's collaborators. Aside from Gully, a well-traveled player
who came up two jazz-generations earlier, the band features some of the
brightest young players on the New York scene, including pianist Julian Shore,
Haitian-American alto saxophonist Godwin Louis, and trumpeter Billy Buss (who
recently released a very impressive debut album Scenes From A Dream featuring
Feinberg and Godwin Louis). Jacob Deaton, an excellent Atlanta guitarist,
contributes on one track.
"These
guys are my friends and they make it a comfortable environment," Feinberg
says. "Each one is a talented composer, and knows how to interpret my
music. Billy and Godwin spent two years playing together every day at the Monk
Institute, and on top of their virtuosic musicianship they're an amazing team.
Along with Julian they're the next generation of guys coming up."
The
album opens with the rousing, hip hop-tinged "Tutuola," a name that
should sound familiar to anyone who's watched Law & Order: Special Victims.
Noting that young players with a lot of down time often end up binging on Law
& Order marathons, Feinberg wrote an episodic theme that slyly alludes to
Ice T's earlier career. "I came up with the rhythmic part of it, and the
melody was definitely influenced by listening to Busta Rhymes and getting into
his flow," he says.
Feinberg
evokes the hustle and flow of life on New York's streets with "Puncher's
Chance," a piece that lightly wears its infatuation with Robert Glasper's
experiments. And he gets down in the gutter with "Dukeface," a joyful
post-bop blues set to a celebratory New Orleans groove that coaxes some
evangelical fervor from Buss and Louis. The album's centerpiece is the
waxing/waning three-part suite "But the Sound," which opens slow and
woozy and grows increasingly intense as it modulates between keys before a
spare, beatific solo by Shore signals calm acceptance. Before exiting with the
title track, Feinberg offers the ravishing ballad "Untitled 2," a
piece that touches on the radical simplicity of bassist/composer Ben Allison's
music from the turn of the century. "It's a pretty piece, not a side of
myself that usually comes out," Feinberg says. "Ben Allison was
definitely a formative influence. I'm trying to take stuff I hear and present
it in ways I haven't heard."
Born and
raised in Atlanta, Feinberg earned his BM in Jazz Performance at the University
of Miami's Frost School of Music, and graduated from New York University with a
master's degree in 2011. While he's enmeshed with his contemporaries, he
credits several authoritative veterans with playing a formative role in his
development, including pianist Jean-Michel Pilc, guitarist John Scofield,
drummer Billy Drummond, and particularly tenor saxophonist George Garzone. A
generous mentor to several generations of improvisers, Garzone inculcated a
sense of commitment in every note that Feinberg plays. "He really taught
me a lot about confidence and having an attitude," Feinberg says. "He's
a no-holds barred player, and he's so deep when it comes to rhythm and sound.
We played duo in his apartment and it forced me to become a better
player."
In many
ways, Feinberg's musical concept hinges on his immersion in the music of Elvin
Jones, the universally hailed rhythmic innovator whose post-Coltrane work as a
bandleader is still too little known. When a friend in college hipped him to
Earth Jones, a classic but long out-of-print quintet 1982 session on Palo Alto,
it started him on a journey that led to The Elvin Jones Project, Feinberg's
powerhouse 2012 album on Sunnyside with Garzone, drum legend Billy Hart,
trumpeter Tim Hagans, and pianist Leo Genovese. "I knew Elvin's work with
Coltrane and Larry Young's Unity, and Wayne Shorter's Blue Note albums, but not
much beyond that," Feinberg recalls. "I started digging and digging,
and became pretty obsessed with him. He was such an amazing musician and as
celebrated as he is I don't think a lot of people recognize how progressive he
was. And Elvin connects all of my favorite bassists: Gene Perla, Dave Holland,
George Mraz, Jimmy Garrison. George Garzone really helped me put it all
together."
When it
comes to a group concept, he's also drawn inspiration from Pilc, the
French-born pianist who has developed a volatile trio that plays his episodic
originals and radically reconstructed standards. "I studied with Hal
Crook, and he said that being in a band should be like a team full of captains.
Jean-Michel's trio works that way, and that's how I want my group to work. We
all have defined roles but it's in flux and they can change at any time."
Feinberg
made a memorable debut as a leader with 2011's With Many Hands, a project that
gathered some of his generation's most formidable players, including
Humblebrag's Shore and Louis, tenor saxophonist Noah Preminger, and versatile
drummer Daniel Platzman (who recently won a Grammy Award with the Las Vegas
rock band Imagine Dragons). As a composer and bandleader, he continues to cast
a wide net, drawing on his disparate array of experiences and deep pool of
exceptional talent. Primarily identified as a jazz musician, Feinberg is often
sought out by singer/songwriters and rock combos. His music, passionate,
emotionally engaged and unafraid to sound raw or polished, effectively reflects
the confluence of sounds and ideas running through New York these days, and
that's no humblebrag.
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