"Jeff Denson Trio + Lee Konitz"
To Be Released July 7
By Denson's Ridgeway Records
Latest Collaboration Between
The Bassist and Altoist
Also Features Pianist Dan Zemelman,
Drummer Jon Arkin
June 8, 2015
Jeff Denson Trio + Lee Konitz
is the first in a planned series of Ridgeway recordings to team
Denson's trio plus a notable guest artist. Marking nearly the 60th
anniversary of Konitz's first appearance on record with his mentor,
Lennie Tristano, the album goes places where no other Tristano (or
Konitz) tribute has ever gone via some rarely recorded songs, including
Warne Marsh's "Background Music" and Tristano's "Baby" and "East Thirty-Second." It also reveals Konitz's delightful scat singing, something that has never been documented on record to this extent.
Jeff first met Lee in
2003, but they didn't team up musically until a few years later, in
Germany, when the saxophonist invited Denson's trio Minsarah
(with Florian Weber and Ziv Ravitz) to his apartment in Cologne to
rehearse. To their surprise, he did not ask them to play their
instruments.
"Instead he said,
let's sing, let's improvise some stuff," Denson recalls. "I guess he had
heard us play enough. That was the start of a great adventure. The
stuff we do is very different than any music in his canon. Lee is a true
improviser. He doesn't play licks. He really responds."
L. to r.: Dan Zemelman, Lee Konitz, Jeff Denson, Jon Arkin.
The Lee Konitz New Quartet with Denson, Weber, and Ravitz went on to tour internationally and produce three albums: Deep Lee (2008), Live at the Village Vanguard (2009), and Standards Live at the Village Vanguard
(2014). Of the 87-year-old Konitz, Denson remarks that "he's old enough
to be my grandfather, but he is still improvising on a master level.
He's not stuck in any way musically."
A prolific composer
and arranger, Denson has written music for an array of jazz settings,
from big band to trio, as well as for string ensembles, solo bass, and a
chamber opera. He's begun work on a chamber opera, plans to try his
hand at film scoring, and is preparing a series of educational books for
his Ridgeway Publishing imprint (part of his recently established
nonprofit, Ridgeway Arts).
In addition to Denson's ongoing Trio +1 projects, the bassist is in the midst of organizing several other recordings. One will feature his Secret World group, which he's expanding to a quintet with Paul Hanson. He's in the process of completing an album with Electreo,
with Hanson, drummer Alan Hall, and Denson on electric bass. And he's
collaborating with Mimi Fox and violinist Mads Tolling in a trio whose
arrangements of the music from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band will be released in time for that seminal album's 50th anniversary in 2017.
To say that Jeff Denson
is currently in a spectacularly expansive period is an understatement;
he is positively thriving on all possible fronts. "I'm in an extremely
stimulating and productive time right now and I'm working as hard as I
can to express all of my ideas," he says. "I find that with my teaching
and all of the various projects I have, I'm able to get a complete
picture of what I'm doing -- each one inspires the other."
The Jeff Denson Trio + Lee Konitz will be performing extensively in Europe this summer and fall. Next month they appear 7/4 at Comblain La Tour Jazz Festival, Hamoir, Belgium; and 7/17 UniversaiJazz, Valladolid, Spain (Trio with Kari Ikonen, p; Ronen Itzik, d).
Fall dates include 10/2 Angra Jazz Festival, Azores, Portugal; 10/23 Domicil, Dortmund; 10/24 Lantaren Venster, Rotterdam; 10/26 Porgy & Bess, Vienna; 10/27 Unterfahrt, Munich; 10/29 Workshop, Helsinki; 10/30 Jazz & The City Festival, Bremen (Trio with Dan Zemelman, p; Alan Hall, d). Additional dates are in the works.
Closer to home, Denson will appear with Zemelman and Hall at the Sound Room in Oakland 8/14.
Photos: James Knox Photography
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Web Site: jeffdenson.com
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