General Notes on QUARTETS (Side B)

Quartets is out today. 

Yesterday, I wrote some additional notes on the music of the first half, which features Dana Saul, Walter Stinson, and Matt Honor. Today, I'll jot down some more notes on the second half, which features Christian Li, Walter, and Kayvon Gordon.

Logistical Notes

We recorded the second half immediately following a three-night, six-set residency at Ohad Talmor's SEEDS in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. I hadn't originally intended to go back to the studio again after recording what became the first side of Quartets just half a year earlier (in October 2022), but I'm glad I did. Given the scarcity of gigs in New York relative to the sheer number of overqualified musicians, it's very hard to estimate when you'll get in enough live shows with a band to feel that it's become something, but fortunately with this group of extremely experienced and sensitive musicians, that brief but invaluable residency was enough to develop a band chemistry that I felt was worth capturing on record. 

For the October 2022 quartet session, I had just gotten a King Super 20 after years of playing Conns, and it hadn't been regulated or adjusted from its existing condition. I played pretty sharp on that session while still getting used to it, but I had a chance to get it overhauled by Mario Scaramuzza (The Sax Kitchen) between then and the May 2023 session. I also switched mouthpieces between sessions (per usual), from one Brilhart Personaline HR to another one that seemed to be refaced pretty dramatically, with an intense almost-step baffle that lent a lot of edge and intensity to the sound. Altissimo was much easier on that mouthpiece, which made the leaps in "Kierkegaardashian" much more feasible. 

The mix of songs on this album also reflected my original intent to pitch this as a kind of mainstream jazz record to a major label like Blue Note. But, after checking in with some esteemed older musicians and seeing the recent success of Endectomorph in partnering with La Reserve, I decided to just keep the album for myself to release. As Eddie Harris once told Rufus Reid, "Even if my books and records collect dust, at least it's my dust."

Notes on the Songs

"Heideggerdashian" was an alternate take of "Kierkegaardashian" that made it onto the record. Emma He developed a wonderfully surreal music video for the song, which was partly inspired by my description of the take to her: like two alternating spaces, one of intense chaos (the saxophone blowing frenetically over the linear composed material) and one of strange stillness (the repeats with the trio only). The animated portions were done using Cine Tracer, "a realistic cinematography simulator," and we leaned into the uncanniness of the avatars to help guide the human portions.

"Homage Kondo" was directly inspired by Reid Anderson's "Hommage Mahler" from the quintessential fin-de-millénaire jazz release Abolish Bad Architecture. I took the blasé rock and straightforward melodic delivery, but wrote my own tonal piece using melodic fragments from Koji Kondo; if you squint, you will recognize quotes from "Great Fairy Fountain," "Zelda's Lullaby," and "The Song of Healing," among others.

I heard Bill McHenry play "On the Street Where You Live" at 23Robadors when I visited Barcelona in December 2022, and I started playing it immediately thereafter. I like where it sits on the horn in Ab rather than the usual C, and I asked Christian to do an intro similar to the beginning of Coltrane's "All or Nothing at All," which also moves to Ab major for the bridge.

Rudderless Blues (or, Obscure Motions) is a rubato, intervallic blues head that transitions into a typical 12-bar Db blues, medium slow. Christian takes a beautifully concise and characteristically oblique chorus.

That Lights a Star is the complement to side A's Storied History, and we added a minor third transposition during the 12/8 vamp to give it a bit more contour and ease of navigation. 

Outlawry is oldest song on the record, which was formerly called "Nomad" during my NEC days. I added the sax and drum duo as part of the arrangement on the record, but the rest of the piece is virtually the same as it was a decade ago.

tbh is the second-oldest song on the record, dating back to a 2015 sketch called HBT referring to unspeakably foul Chinese language courtesy of my friend Zhang Ke. The premise of the song was to write conventionally complex modern jazz changes with a slow kind of non-melody sitting on top. I added the piano-saxophone soli for this version, which Christian nailed. I also forgot until re-listening just now that we included the band response (primal wail of relief) from this take at the very end. This music is not easy, but Christian, Walter, and Kayvon really did it justice.

Pixelate is a cluster-driven composition, which is mostly notated in 4/4 but doesn't really feel that way because of the way the material is spatially arranged. I wrote myself a nice feature section in duet with the piano, and tried to take advantage of the irregular spaces between the clusters to fragment and re-scale the time.

Yellow Magic (Tong Poo) is a YMO cover, with a freely rubato version of the intro and the body of the song re-phrased in a flowing 12/8. Christian's solo really takes the piece into outer space and captures the intensity and freedom of the live performances.

Estaté is a classic Italian pop ballad that I started playing in early 2023 simply because I liked the melody. Most people play it in E minor (after João Gilberto's iconic version on Amoroso), but I pitched it to G minor to better access the darker keys of the horn. We originally played this quartet, but on one of the nights at SEEDS, it became a duet with Christian, and we decided to keep it for the mysterious, intimate atmosphere.

Kierkegaardashian closes the record, which I discuss in more detail here.

Notes on the Cover Art

The remaining photographs in the inner quadrant are laid out below (clockwise, from top left):

Sunset on a lake in Maine, August 2023

The moon in twilight in New Jersey, later in August 2023

The same sunset from the first photo but moments earlier, August 2023

The embers of sunset through the trees in Prospect Park, February 2024