Sam
Sadigursky, a first-call sideman and bandleader across a broad spectrum of
music, and an award-winning composer (Chamber Music America, The Jerome
Foundation), debuts a brand new band on his new recording, Follow The Stick, to
be released on Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records on November 6, 2015. Follow
The Stick is a sophisticated collection of original music from one of the most
respected musicians on the New York scene. It is also Sam's "coming out
party" as a clarinetist, which he has put front and center as of late. He
explains, "It was a natural evolution in many ways, both practically and
creatively. I started on saxophone, but began studying clarinet pretty early as
well my father is a classically trained clarinetist and accordionist from the
Soviet Union, who now plays mostly Klezmer and Eastern European folk music. I
remember interviewing him for a 5th grade project and asking him what some of
his dreams in life were, and he told me about wanting to learn to play jazz
clarinet, something he's always loved. About four or five years ago something
really clicked for me with the instrument and I've put most of my energies into
it, and people have been calling me more and more for my clarinet playing since
then. Unlike the endless sea of jazz saxophone players, there aren't that many
improvisers today playing clarinet at a high level, so it's allowed me to
really create a little niche for myself, and creatively, I feel there's so much
more room to explore with it. I really feel that it's my voice as an
instrumentalist."
This new
recording follows up Sadigursky's five acclaimed The Words Project albums on
New Amsterdam Records, where the music is based on text and poetry. With Follow
The Stick we now have an opportunity to hear why Sadigursky is considered a
"musician's musician", and so revered as a collaborator/sideman.
"The Words Project material sort of allowed me to hide behind the singers.
There's not that much stretching out on those albums, since I was always
conscious of this larger compositional scheme, being faithful to the text and
not allowing it to get overshadowed by the music," said Sadigursky.
"We stretch on this one."
The music on
Follow The Stick is comprised of new, and some not so new, original
compositions, plus a modern take on the Glenn Miller hit, "String Of
Pearls". Originally, Sadigursky planned on writing all new music for this
group; things with a more overt sort of swing associated with this
instrumentation (clarinet, trumpet, vibraphone, piano & drums), such as
"Do The Dance", but, "when I started to fish through old
notebooks for ideas I found so many nearly-completed old tunes of mine that
never had life breathed into them. Having focused on those vocal albums for
nearly ten years, there is still a huge backlog of instrumental material that
I'm sifting through. However, I did write some new tunes for the group, things
like 'Deadly Sins' and 'Math Music', and these might better reflect my thinking
today - lots of meter changes and metric modulations - where many of the older
tunes are more lead-sheet oriented and open," explained Sadigursky.
"Follow
The Stick" is musician's slang for following a conductor, but it also
applies to the clarinet, which has been subjected to a host of (mostly)
derogatory nicknames, due primarily to its unforgiving nature as an instrument
(i.e. the licorice stick, the agony stick, etc.). "The clarinet is such an
unyielding instrument - the technical difficulty of it can be really
controlling; as a player you often have to follow wherever it wants to go.
There's just a lot more to trip over technically on it. Really though, I just
liked the sound of those words, their directness and the sarcastic suggestion
of dictatorship, which is of course so counter to musicmaking. Plus, I wanted
this to be a real band, so I figured the first thing that any band needs is a
name," said Sadigursky.
The Follow
The Stick band began as a trio featuring Bobby Avey on piano and Jordan Perlson
on drums, an instrumentation inspired by the great clarinet trios of the '40s
led by Benny Goodman, which didn't have a bass player. "Bobby Avey is
really the whole package he plays the whole piano with a real sound, has such
a compositional sense, and he's an instigator, totally fearless, something I
really value in the people I play with. His left hand is so developed that he
fills the space left in the group by not having a bass player so naturally,
without ever slipping into cliches," commented Sadigursky. "I heard
Jordan on Bobby's records, and was really blown away. I had known him for years
through his playing with Becca Stevens (who is on several of The Words Project
albums), so I called him for one of the informal sessions with Bobby. What I
didn't know was that Bobby and Jordan grew up playing together in Pennsylvania,
so they go back a long time. It felt like a band to me from the first moment,
and immediately after that session I remember taking them out to lunch and
basically getting down on one knee and asking them to be part of something more
ongoing. Jordan is so well versed in so much music he can play the hard
stuff, but then is one of the best rock drummers I've ever heard. 'Math Music',
the last tune on the album, is basically a big ol' feature for him, and he
kills it."
After a few
gigs with the trio, Sadigursky was looking for a bit more color for the group,
a musician who could thicken the textures and also give the piano some support
during solos, and support the melodic content as well. He elaborated, "I
thought about which instrument I would like to try adding, and vibes came to
mind first, since they have such a history alongside the clarinet - Benny
Goodman/Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw's Gramercy Five, Buddy DeFranco/Terry Gibbs,
etc. I had never played with Chris Dingman before, but remember being really
impressed by his first album, Waking Dreams. After doing a session with him I
knew he was the guy. It takes a lot of sensitivity for a vibes player and a
pianist to play well together, and it seemed to come so easily for Chris and
Bobby. One of my favorite parts of the record is the extended intro they play
to 'Heart' they sound like they've been playing together for years." Boston-based
trumpeter Jason Palmer plays on five tracks. Sadigursky had a trumpet player in
mind for some tracks, and was blown away by Palmer's playing on a European tour
they did with Darcy James Argue's group. "It's rare that I hear a trumpet
sound that I love, and Jason's gives me goosebumps every time I hear it,"
said Sadigursky. Ljova plays viola on just one track, "Looks Can Be
Deceiving," an open sketch with no written melody, just a sequence of
chords and a vague notion of how they should be played. "Although he's not
a jazz improviser, his sense of melody is so great, and I love the sound of the
viola, it has a very similar ruminative, dark quality to the clarinet. I love
how they sound together."
"In
addition to all the different folk traditions that the clarinet is part of,
there's such a great tradition of jazz clarinet that I'm still in the midst of
discovering. I'm amazed at how much of it goes unnoticed these days - these
clarinet greats were so prodigious. However, having come up as a saxophonist listening
to Coltrane, Rollins, Henderson, Lovano, etc., I have all these other sounds in
my head as well - you play any of that stuff on the saxophone and most people
have heard it a thousand times, but play those influences on the clarinet and
it actually sounds pretty fresh. To me, at least."
More on Sam
Sadigursky - Since moving to New York in 2002, Sadigursky continues to make his
mark both as a leader and sideman. His series of albums of original music based
on poetry and text entitled The Words Projecthave been acclaimed
internationally. Noted music critic Steve Smith called them, "compelling
and touchingly intimate...that rare anomaly: a jazz-and-poetry record that
sounds utterly natural and convincing", and went on to name Sadigursky's
debut album as one of Time Out New York's "Top Ten Albums of 2007".
The New York Times has called them "gracefully high-minded explorations of
poetic form." Sadigursky has toured and recorded as a saxophonist and
clarinetist with artists such as Brad Mehldau, Lucia Pulido, Gabriel Kahane,
Tom Jones, Edmar Castaneda, Linda Oh, The Mingus Orchestra, Jamie Baum Septet,
Ljova, Pablo Mayor's Folklore Urbano, La Cumbiamba eNeYe, and has been
nominated for two Grammy awards for his work with Darcy James Argue's Secret
Society. As a composer, he has written for film and modern dance and has also
published three books of original etudes for clarinet and saxophone. Sadigursky
has appeared at some of the world's most prestigious venues and festivals, has
performed for numerous Broadway shows, and appears on over twenty-five albums
as a sideman.
