The trick about falling down rabbit holes is knowing how to
get back out. The insistently inventive composer, arranger, bandleader and
educator Ayn Inserto has built a brilliant career around her gift for designing
fantastical but slyly logical musical landscapes and crafting sonic adventures
marked by sinuously surprising melodies, Technicolor harmonies, and arrestingly
vivid voicings. Due for release on Summit Records on September 21, 2018, the
Ayn Inserto Jazz Orchestra's first new album in a decade, Down a Rabbit Hole,
reintroduces her sly and imaginative musical world, a realm populated by some
of jazz's most expressive improvisers.
In many ways Inserto conceived Rabbit Hole to showcase her
three special guests - trumpet star Sean Jones, tenor sax great George Garzone,
and trombonist John Fedchock - along with her exceptional cast of players many
of whom have been with her since she launched the group in 2001. "I saw
the album as an opportunity to feature these three amazing musicians, people I
consider good friends and musical influences," says Inserto. "They're
three artists who don't necessarily play together so it was really fun to bring
them together."
A protégé of legendary trombonist/arranger/composer Bob
Brookmeyer, Inserto has ascended to jazz's top ranks over the past two decades,
earning numerous awards and commissions. Her last release, 2015's Home Away
From Home (Neuklang Records), documented her collaboration with Italy's
acclaimed Colours Jazz Orchestra. With Rabbit Hole, she's landed back on home
turf. From the first track "Three and Me," her bespoke sensibility
provides her guest triumvirate with passages tailored to their musical
personalities.
She arranged "BJ's Tune" as a vehicle for Jones'
gorgeous trumpet, a sound as rich and glorious as any on the scene. His poised
solo is a case study in melodic development as the band gently churns
underneath his ascending lines. Inserto doesn't really write programmatic
music, but the briskly swinging "Mister and Dudley" does capture the
frisky energy and quotidian pleasures of spending time with the tune's sources
of inspiration. Inspired by Fedchock and bass trombonist Jennifer Wharton's two
namesake dogs, the piece evokes the pooches with affable affection.
Inserto recorded the title track, which was commissioned by
the Amherst Jazz Ensemble, on her last album with Colours Jazz Orchestra, but
that sojourn underground was a relatively calm excursion. Unleashing Garzone on
the tempestuous chart results in a whirlwind adventure with his Mad Hatter
saxophone inciting the band's tea party rumpus. The album's centerpiece is
Inserto's two-part suite pairing of "Ze Teach" with "And
Me," a commission by Madison Technical College. The first piece is
inspired by Brookmeyer (who signed off on notes to Inserto as "Ze
Teach") while the second movement is a powerhouse statement driven by her
sensational rhythm section with guitarist Eric Hofbauer, pianist Jason Yeager,
bassist Sean Farias, and drummer Austin McMahon (whose supple touch and architectural
sense of form always elevates her music).
There are any number of ways to run and maintain a jazz
orchestra. Duke Ellington's ornery crew was famous for its long-running feuds
and disputations, a bumptious environment that clearly didn't impede his
unprecedented creative output. Inserto has taken the opposite tack, fostering a
familial vibe that encompasses her special guests. She met Jones during his
tenure as chair of the Berklee College of Music's brass department. "We
started collaborating early on," she says. "I've gotten to know him
really well and was so excited he was into recording."
Garzone, who has mentored several generations of improvisers
and is the subject of a new documentary Let Be What Is, has appeared on every
album by Inserto's orchestra. Though not an official member, he has played an
essential role in shaping the group's sound. Fedchock has intersected with
Inserto in various ways over the years, from hiring her as a copyist way back
when to marrying her longtime friend, the orchestra's able bass trombonist
Jennifer Wharton.
Inserto worked assiduously to foster an environment in which
exceptional musicians like trumpeter Dan Rosenthal, saxophonist Allan Chase,
and reed expert/flutist Rick Stone can thrive. "I always cook for my
band," she says. "Any time we have a gig I make sure they have food.
I consider lot of the players close friends. My husband Jeff Claassen plays
lead trumpet. There's a trombone and bass trombone duet in 'Mr. and Dudley,'
featuring Jen and John. Randy Pingrey (trombone) and Kathy Olson (bari sax) are
another married couple. There's not a single person in the band who I couldn't
call on or hang out with."
Born in Singapore, Inserto was 14 when her family relocated
to California. Within a year had settled in the San Francisco Bay Area's East
Bay, where Inserto was well prepared to take advantage of the region's
extensive jazz educational resources. She had started taking piano lessons as a
child and jumped into music at her Catholic church where she became "very active
in the church choir. They had this one band that had a little more modern
sound," Inserto recalls. "I was playing the organ, and there was lot
of improvising that would go on before the service started. A lot of our music
only had lead sheets, and I'd make up stuff to go with them."
Introduced to jazz via the Manhattan Transfer, she learned
to read chords from a book of Disney tunes and soon started substituting her
own chord choices to make the songs sound more interesting. By the time she
entered Clayton Valley High School in the East Bay city of Concord, Inserto was
obsessed with music, playing piano in various school ensembles including the
jazz band. She discovered Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner and other piano giants while
continuing to study classical piano. She was also an avid member of the
award-winning Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps, playing mallet percussion. A
weeklong Berklee camp in Los Angeles expanded her jazz vocabulary
exponentially, she says. "Around that time," she says, "I also got hired to write for the Blue
Devils corps, writing all these mallet percussion ensemble pieces."
She attended Los Medanos College's respected jazz program
for several years and then transferred to Cal State Hayward (now Cal State East
Bay), where she thrived under the tutelage of trombonist/arranger Dave
Eshelman, a revered educator and bandleader who has mentored several
generations of exceptional Bay Area jazz musicians (he provides Rabbit Hole's
spot-on liner notes in verse). Encouraged to apply to New England Conservatory
by saxophonist and NEC professor Allan Chase, Inserto was drawn to the school
by Brookmeyer. "I studied two full years with him," says Inserto, now
a long-time associate professor of jazz composition at Berklee College of
Music. "I was writing from a piano player's point of view, and he got me
into more melodic writing, developing these long lines. After NEC he really
took me on as a mentor."
While Brookmeyer's influence is laced throughout Inserto's
music she has honed an independent musical identity writing and arranging for
her orchestra as well numerous other ensembles that come calling with
commissions. Her orchestra's 2006 debut album Clairvoyance earned rave reviews
hailing her vivid writing and seemingly boundless well of ideas. The project
featured Brookmeyer, Garzone, and many of the key players who are still part of
the 17-piece ensemble. Her second album, 2009's Muse, cemented her reputation
as a composer and arranger of exceptional acuity.
The various connections manifesting in Down a Rabbit Hole
are captured in the album's cover art by Kendall Eddy (a former bassist for the
band). Inserto commissioned him to create the artwork, which features various
layers of symbolism - like Boston's skyline in the background - readily discernible
to a sharp-eyed observer. "There's the brook running through the field,
which stands for Brookmeyer," Inserto says. "There are the three
giants who drank the potion, like Alice, and became the big artists. I'm
running around amidst all the madness."
Crazy like a fox, Inserto has created her own musical
Wonderland with her orchestra, a sensational aural universe easily accessible
with a little step down a rabbit hole.
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