Hot Cup Records is proud to present Jazz Band/Rock
Band/Dance Band, the triple-album release by bassist/composer/arranger Moppa
Elliott. Featuring three drastically contrasting ensembles, this project
displays Elliott's talents as a composer, bandleader, and artist who is willing
to constantly challenge his audience - and himself.
The bands featured on these albums include jazz band
Advancing on a Wild Pitch (Elliott, Sam Kulik, Charles Evans, Danny Fox,
Christian Coleman), rock band Unspeakable Garbage (Elliott, Jon Irabagon, Nick
Millevoi, Ron Stabinsky, Dan Monaghan), and dance band Acceleration Due to
Gravity (Elliott, George Burton, Mike Pride, Nate Wooley, Dave Taylor, Matt
Nelson, Bryan Murray, Dr. Kyle Saulnier, Ava Mendoza). Each of these ensembles presents a different
side of Elliott's musical personality and diverse array of influences which
have lurked beneath the surface of his work with MOPDtK, but are given full
voice on these recordings. All of the
music is united both through Elliott's foundational bass playing and his
penchant for manipulating and subverting traditional song forms, melodies, and
harmonies.
Each composition or arrangement is named after a town in
Pennsylvania, as has been the case with Elliott's titles since 2004, and each
band is named after the theme around which it was built. Elliott's previous release as a leader was
2016's solo double-bass album Still, Up in the Air. He founded the label Hot Cup Records in 2001,
has led the ensemble "Mostly Other People Do the Killing" since he
created it in 2003, and has taught choir, orchestra, music theory, and music
history to high school students in the greater NY area since 2004.
On these three recordings, Elliott explores aspects of his
musical personality that have not yet been fully documented. Having grown up in a household where Cecil
Taylor, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Igor Stravinsky, and Steve Reich were all
in heavy rotation on the family turntable, Elliott developed an interest in
many styles of music, encountering rock and roll through the popular culture of
his childhood, and hip-hop while a student at the Oberlin Conservatory. In addition to the music presented on these
recordings, Elliott performs new music with the "Relache Ensemble" in
Philadelphia, serves as principal bassist of the Litha Symphony in Chelsea,
NYC, and continues to lead the jazz ensemble "Mostly Other People Do the
Killing."
Advancing on a Wild Pitch is comprised of musicians who all
resided in Astoria, Queens (pianist Danny Fox has foolishly relocated to
Brooklyn) and are avid baseball fans.
The five members have known each other since the mid-2000s, but the
quintet was formed in 2016 to explore some of Elliott's compositions from
MOPDtK in another context. Rather than
disassembling Elliott's tunes in the manner of MOPDtK, AWP approaches the
compositions from the perspective of the classic jazz era of the early
1960s. Some of the tunes are reimagined
versions of pages from the MOPDtK book, while others, such as "Slab"
never fit the aesthetic of Elliott's earlier ensembles.
Unspeakable Garbage allows Elliott and his jazz-trained
bandmates to explore the sound world and musical vocabulary of 1980s rock and
roll, a style that all the members love dearly and has had a profound influence
on their musicianship. In the early 2000s, Jon Irabagon briefly led a band
called "Starship's Journey: A Tribute to the Music of the 80s" in
which the ensemble would perform cover versions of pop tunes and play all of
the instrumental solos in unison. Elliott
composed the music for this band in the aftermath of a difficult breakup, and
the cathartic nature of the music is plain to hear. UG performs "instrumental van
Halen" or "Def Leppard with no singing" or "Aerosmith with
more chords" or "Pat Benatar singing a TV sitcom theme."
Acceleration Due to Gravity is the result of the 18-year
friendship between pianist George Burton and Moppa Elliott. The two met at the Pennsylvania Governor's
School for the Arts, a sadly defunct state-funded arts program that they both
attended and subsequently taught at.
Given their differences in approach, Elliott formed ADtG to be the type
of ensemble in which they could both thrive, and the influence of drummer Mike
Pride, a longtime collaborator, contributed to the aesthetic.
The music is based on Elliott's idea of "dance
music" in its many modern forms.
From jump blues to hip-hop, American dance music has revolved around
grooves and their myriad possibilities.
Each composition is based on a musical cycle or loop that never repeats
itself, exactly. The model for these
compositions was modern hip-hop, R&B, and dance music production in which
the music relies heavily on "loops."
Rather than repeat the same rhythms or musical elements exactly, they
change subtly very often. The soloists take turns offering 'verses" or
"bars" and there is deliberately little material that could be
considered a primary melody, "head," or "hook."
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