With his
No Fast Food trio, the drummer, composer and new jazz mainstay Phil Haynes -
along with the iconic tenor and soprano saxophonist Dave Liebman and the
perennially in-demand bassist Drew Gress - has shaped a fluid unit that can
confidently take its place alongside the celebrated combos which provided the
very inspiration for the band, including the legendary Elvin Jones trio with
Joe Farrell and Jimmy Garrison.
On In
Concert, recorded at New York State and Pennsylvania performances in 2012, No
Fast Food - an outfit comprised of veteran musicians who unite experience with
imperishable vitality - announces itself as one of the premier new jazz bands
of the day.
As its
name implies, No Fast Food is not in the business of providing only instant
gratification, but rather the musical riches that come from a considered
listening to the band, repaying any effort in full. Stressing intimate communication and the
opportunity to creatively fill space or to keep it tantalizingly open, No Fast
Food react with jaguar-like agility, each member responding to the other with
live-wire resourcefulness.
Although
Haynes is the leader and chief composer of the trio, No Fast Food is a band of
equals, as befits the resolutely interactive nature of the group itself. Throughout In Concert, Haynes, Liebman and
Gress display the art of collective listening in its highest form.
Spare
though the trio's instrumentation may be, No Fast Food isn't afraid of allowing
space to reveal musical delight. Haynes,
Liebman and Gress weave in and out of their musical web, thus ensuring variety
and the pleasures of sonic spaciousness that arise when superior players are
confident enough not to play.
Blending
memorable composition with both harmonic and open form improvisation, each
performance -- be it driving ("Together," "West Virginian
Blues," "Workin' It," "Out of the Bowels," "The
Code"), mid-tempo ("Blues For Israel," "Dawn On the Gladys
Marie") or ballad ("Last Dance," "Incantation,"
"Chant," "Ballad du Jour,")
- offers a chance to hear sympathetic players mesh in indivisible unity
while also nudging each other into unexplored terrain, guided only by a superbly
intuitive sense of collective purpose.
No Fast
Food is a logical outgrowth of Haynes's extensive experience in trio contexts,
including his celebrated work with the maverick trumpeter Paul Smoker.
"The
meaningful conversations that occur as three streams of information come
together - that's the magic of trios," Haynes says. "There's both
this amazing individual clarity that can be achieved, as well as an equality of
ensemble counterpoint. I wrote the music for this project for these particular
players, yet when things work best, as they do on this recording, the sum of
the whole is greater than the parts. If I do my job as a leader, No Fast Food
will always sound like a collective."
"You
honor the masters by taking the music forward. With No Fast Food we're looking
for freshness. It's not about fitting into a specific genre. We swing, we play
open; we love composition and we love taking it apart and moving it all to a
different space."
In his
thirty-plus year career, Phil Haynes has recorded alongside such illustrious
jazz figures as Anthony Braxton, Dave Douglas, Marty Ehrlich, Mark Feldman and
Michele Rosewoman, among many, and has performed with diverse instrumentalists
including Don Byron, Billy Childs, Charles Gayle, Louis Sclavis, Gary Thomas
and Kenny Werner. He has also been an integral member of ensembles featuring
Paul Smoker, Ellery Eskelin, Clarence 'Herb' Robertson and Gebhard Ullmann, as
well as led the bands Free Country, 4 Horns & What?, Continuum and Hammond
Insurgency. Haynes' music has been
called ". . . the perfect middle between tradition and avant-garde,
between power and sophistication, between accessibility and adventure,"
(Stef, FreeJazzBlog.org).
An NEA
Jazz Master, David Liebman has been a major force on the tenor and soprano
saxophones since attracting attention in the early-1970s bands of Elvin Jones
and Miles Davis. In subsequent work,
with Lookout Farm, Quest and numerous other ensembles, Liebman has since gone
on to become an internationally regarded bandleader and prolific recording
artist.
Drew
Gress, one of the first call bassists on the contemporary jazz scene, has done
significant work with Fred Hersch, John Abercrombie, Ravi Coltrane, Tim Berne,
Uri Caine, Don Byron, John Surman and many others. In addition to being
featured on nearly two dozen CDs partnered with Phil Haynes, Gress is also a
gifted band leader, composer and recording artist.
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