In
demand sideman, bassist/composer Noah Garabedian, who has worked with the likes
of Ravi Coltrane, Josh Roseman, Ralph Alessi, Andrew D'Angelo, Myron Walden,
Nir Felder, Julian Waterfall Pollack and The Amigos Band, recently released his
debut recording as a leader, Big Butter And The Egg Men, on Brooklyn Jazz
Underground Records, featuring his sextet of the same name. Garabedian now leads the band, featuring Noah
Garabedian (bass), Kenny Warren (trumpet), Anna Webber (tenor saxophone and
flute), Kyle Wilson (tenor saxophone), Raffi Garabedian (tenor saxophone),
Curtis Macdonald (alto saxophone) and Alex Ritz (drums), at Bay Area CD Release
Celebrations, February 12 at Duende in Oakland, and February 13 at the Center
for New Music in San Francisco.
The
instrumentation of Garabedian's band was inspired by a prolonged Louis
Armstrong phase, coupled with the bassist listening extensively to Henry
Threadgill's bands Zooid, and Very Very Circus (several of the tracks on the
album also reveal Garabedian's love for Bach, and Baroque music in general). He
elaborated, "I wanted to create a band where the musicians could all comp
for each other, without a traditional chordal instrument, and having a band
that can potentially go from being an entire sextet improvising together, to a
small duo or trio, was a very exciting prospect for me." Garabedian aimed
to compose music that provide a spring board for the improvisers, and that
would have a more natural transition between the composed passages and the
improvised sections. He explains, "rather than writing in a conventional
jazz structures (such as the blues, or AABA forms, etc), I wanted to experiment
with several different melodies in a piece, different improvising sections
throughout the composition, and a variety of textures within each song."
The Big
Butter And the Egg Men Sextet, featuring Garabedian on bass with Kyle Wilson
(tenor sax), Anna Webber (tenor sax), Curtis MacDonald (alto sax), Kenny Warren
(trumpet) and Evan Hughes (drums), is made up of musicians who are also friends
who have been making music together for a long time. Just to cite one example,
Garabedian, now based in Brooklyn, and drummer Evan Hughes (both from Berkeley,
CA) have known each other since they were teenagers. "Having that band
quality is very important to me, especially in an age where so few steady
working bands exist. The trust I have in the musicians is something that I
value greatly; not only can I rely on them to perform my music at a high level,
but I also welcome their input while we are work-shopping new compositions,"
said Garabedian.
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