Hot Cup Records announces the January 19, 2018 release of
The Great Nostalgist, the third album by the NYC- based Danny Fox Trio. Since its critically acclaimed 2011 debut The
One Constant (Songlines) and 2014 follow-up Wide Eyed (Hot Cup), the group has
continued to push the boundaries of the classic piano trio format. The Great Nostalgist, recorded to tape in the
living room of a 100-year old house in the Catskills, captures the band's
uniquely personal, genre-defying original music in a warm, intimate setting
with no headphones, isolation booths, or overdubs. Falling somewhere between
jazz and chamber music, the album's ten pieces are replete with sonic
surprises: quirky rhythms, jaunty yet catchy melodies, haunting harmonies, and
out-of-the-box arrangements that spotlight the capabilities of each member of
the group, all while maintaining tuneful melodies. The modern yet tradition-embracing music
filters themes of nostalgia, early influences, and old haunts through the lens
of the present.
Formed in 2008, the Danny Fox Trio, featuring pianist Danny
Fox, bassist Chris van Voorst van Beest, and drummer Max Goldman, is a true
working band. Whether holed up in a Brooklyn basement rehearsing or touring
around the country crammed into a sedan, the trio has spent countless hours
developing a rapport that's immediately palpable in their music.
Though rooted in jazz, the three versatile musicians are
also active in chamber music, bluegrass, electro, and New Orleans rhythm and
blues, thereby giving the band a sound that is all-encompassing yet strikingly
individual. Having committed these intricate and challenging compositions to
memory and performed them scores of times, the influence and aesthetic of rock
bands is readily appreciated.
The trio explores a wide range of novel techniques to eschew
standard forms and roles. The piano,
typically both the lead melodic and harmonic voice, rarely performs these two
roles simultaneously. Instead, Fox opts for textures that feature the abilities
of his bandmates and explore the more extreme ranges of the piano. In addition
to fulfilling the traditional role as rhythmic anchor, bassist van Voorst van
Beest provides melodies, counterpoint, and coloristic arco effects adeptly.
Goldman employs traditional drumbeats effectively, but often opts for a more
orchestral approach, mimicking symphonic playing.
The ten pieces on The Great Nostalgist navigate through a
vast array of grooves, harmonies, time signatures, tempo shifts, free
improvisations, and dynamics while always remaining grounded in the thematic
material, giving the music a seamlessness and cohesion that make it both
challenging and highly listenable.
The album opens with the rolling piano figures, moody bass
melody, and haunting cymbal howls of "Adult Joe," an homage to old
friends and kiddie nicknames. The first
six bass notes plucked by van Voorst van Beest provide the theme that spins out
into the various sections of the piece.
"Theme for Gloomy Bear," written for a giant pink stuffed
animal with claws, alternates between wistful ballad and
pulsating trancelike grooves. In the
earliest version of the piece, Goldman conceived the shaker figure using a mint
tin which burst open and left stray mints lurking in Fox's living room to this
day.
"Jewish Cowboy (the Real Josh Geller)" summons
Fox's love for minor-key country tunes, tapping into one of his earliest
influences: the bluegrass of artists such as Doc Watson that his parents would
play on car trips. The ominous bass
chords of the middle section evoke a dusty mountain range before the spirited
hootenanny-like group improvisation closes the song. The first of two ice cream themed titles,
"Cookie Puss Prize," named for the Carvel mascot Fox won in a fifth
grade ice cream eating competition, begins with a swirling contrapuntal duet
between the piano and bass before the drums sneak in with a bouncy polyrhythmic
Afro-Cuban groove. "Truant"
was composed in short bursts in the practice rooms of Harvard University amidst
repeatedly being kicked out by a dour front desk attendant. The piece scrambles
frantically with tumbling piano/bass melodies giving way to momentary respites
of calm. The lone solo piano piece of the album, "Caterpillar
Serenade" could be the underscoring for a movie trailer and flashes back
to an early family home movie where Fox's brother sings him a happy first
birthday on a caterpillar-shaped accordion.
"Preamble" begins with two short improvised piano and bass
sections, each set against an off-kilter ostinato. A similar figure resurfaces where the drums
improvise over the squirrely, record-skipping rhythm. Named for an impossibly neon green ice cream
treat from the 80s, "Fat Frog" is a nostalgic, old-timey piece with
an intro that conjures a theater curtain rising up. The hopeful opening notes are quickly
hijacked into darker terrain as the melody careens along a windy, breakneck
path. "Emotional Baggage Carousel,"
conceived at JFK Airport Terminal 4, explores themes of sentimentality and
longing alongside a Rocky-like optimism (for receiving your luggage?). Purely by coincidence, The Great Nostalgist
closes in the same manner as the group's second album Wide Eyed: with a song
inspired by laundry. "Old Wash
World," an imagining of an earlier, simpler time at Fox's local laundromat
New Wash World, builds a boisterous yet sinister dance party on a simple piano
riff mined from a long-ignored voice memo.
The Great Nostalgist is also a reunion of pianist Fox with
recording/mixing engineer Tyler Wood, who recorded the first music Fox ever
wrote while the two were at Harvard University in 2002.
Pianist Danny Fox was born in New York City where he became
immersed in the jazz scene from an early age. In high school, Danny was
selected as a Presidential Scholar in the Arts and went on to attend Harvard
University during which time he became active in the Boston music scene. He
formed the Danny Fox Trio in 2008 as a vehicle for his original compositions
and since then the working group has performed steadily around NYC and the US,
releasing the critically acclaimed albums "The One Constant"
(Songlines) and "Wide Eyed" (Hot Cup). Called a "pianist of diverse
accomplishment" (NY Times), Danny has established himself as a versatile
musician active in a wide variety of settings, co-founding the New Orleans rock
and roll group Tubby, playing around the fertile Brooklyn roots and bluegrass
scene, performing on Broadway, and collaborating with the cutting edge video
artist Meghan Allynn Johnson. He has
performed with artists as diverse as Bruce Springsteen, Cassandra Wilson,
Michael Blake, and Kermit Driscoll.
Born in Pownal, Maine, bassist Chris van Voorst van Beest
has been an in-demand presence on the New York music scene since moving to
Brooklyn in 2005. Chris received his
bachelor's degree at the University of New Hampshire and a Master's degree in
composition at City College of New York, where he studied with Pulitzer-Prize
winning composer David Del Tredici. Known for his big sound, lyrical bass
lines, and versatility in different musical settings including jazz, rock,
contemporary classical, and bluegrass, Chris performs regularly around New York
City with a wide variety of jazz, chamber, and new music groups. He tours frequently to Europe, having performed
extensively in the Czech Republic, Spain, Turkey and Italy. An emerging composer, Chris is the founder of
the chamber music project Hear + Now which features his original compositions
for ensembles of various sizes. His most recent work Het Glazen Herenhuis, a
sonnet for piano, cello and clarinet, was premiered in Brooklyn in July of
2017. Chris was a nominee for the 2016 Charles Ives Arts and Letters
award. In 2009 Chris was awarded a grant
to compose the original score for the children's book "The Lamplighter,"
featuring narration by noted folk artist Sam Amidon.
Born in Rochester, NY, drummer Max Goldman was fortunate to
study under local greats Jeff Lewis, Steve Curry and Rich Thompson. He moved to
New York City in 2001, attending NYU and the New School, where he studied with
Tony Moreno, Gerald Cleaver and Kenny Washington. Since graduating in 2006, Max
has been active in Brooklyn's fertile creative scene. He spends much of his
time touring Europe, South America, the US, and Canada with a diverse lineup of
artists. In addition to the Danny Fox Trio, Max has performed and recorded with
Becca Stevens, Tim Berne, The Elan Mehler Group, Old Time Musketry, Midnight
Magic, Nomi Ruiz, and Eleanor Friedberger. He has been called "a seriously
propulsive force" by the Chicago Reader and his drumming has been
described as "beautifully melodic, even pianistic" by the New York
Jazz Review.
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