Swiula, Blaise/Don Minasi/Nobu Stowe/Ray Sage - New York Moments
SKU
KONNEX5179
"Following the recording session on September 4th 2005 which produced the Konnex Records release Brooklyn Moments", Blaise, Ray and I decided to keep the trio as a regular-working unit. Mostly due to the distance between NYC (Blaise & Ray) and Baltimore (myself), we had to wait awhile to perform together again. The chance came when we had a gig at Kavehaz in the Chelsea district of Manhattan almost four months after. For this gig, we were joined by two guest musicians: the Ornette Coleman's Prime Time guitarist, Bern Nix, and the up-and-coming viola player, Robyn Siwula. The Kavehaz gig indicated the potential of having additional players to the basic trio. So when Ray proposed to finance another recording session, I quickly suggested adding the fourth member ...the master guitarist Dom Minasi, specifically. Dom and Blaise have been collaborating on and off since mid 90's. So I knew that they would work beautifully together. I expected Dom's angular phrasing and passionate guitar style would match perfectly with Ray's powerful drumming. My task was to retain structural cohesiveness and melodic spontaneity of total-improvisation within a lager frame work of abstract free-improvisation from the three master improvisers. The four of us went into "The Studio" in Soho on February 18th 2006. The session was the first ever meeting of this quartet and was beautifully recorded by Katherine Miller and Shinobu Mitsuoka. All four of us hit right on from the begging. The quartet successfully expanded the concept seeded during the earlier trio (Siwula, Stowe & Sage) sessions. Even compared to the trio recordings, the quartet managed to come up something fresh and original. Dom brought an intriguing linear perspective to the music. The good chemistry between Blaise, Dom and Ray were clearly evident...and I believe that I succeeded to provide an individual melodic and structural touch to their abstract mysticism. So...what's next?"-October 2006, Nobu Stowe