BASHO
RECORDS
HOME | CATALOGUE | ARTISTS | CONTACT | JAZZCDS | THE COMMITTEE | BASHO MUSIC
ONE CHRIS HIGGINBOTTOM (drums) SEAMUS BLAKE
(saxes) |
"Chris Higginbottom's
Drumming has the smooth clarity that Tony Williams "Up-to-the-minute and frighteningly accomplished" Dave Gelly The Observer "Very sophisticated postbop" John Fordham The Guardian Label Basho Records Tracks: |
Rising star drummer Chris Higginbottom will be returning to the UK in summer/ autumn 2005 to tour his long-awaited debut album “ONE” featuring New York based musicians Seamus Blake, tenor saxophone (Dave Douglas), Aaron Goldberg, piano (Joshua Redman) and Orlando le Fleming, bass (Jane Monheit).
Chris presents a combination of originals and modern interpretations of compositions by some great American musicians including Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie and Wayne Shorter.
The strong melodic content of the music makes this album accessible contemporary jazz, but a closer listen reveals subtle complexities that are as evident in Chris' approach to composing and arranging as they are in his playing.
Odd time signatures, and a wide range of tempos from slow ballads to up-tempo swing are performed by some of the finest New York - based musicians of today, all of whom are as well versed in the tradition of the music as they are internationally acclaimed artists.
Recorded at The Studio, Greene St, New York City 11 August 2004
Recording Engineer Katherine Miller
Assistant Recording Engineer Eiji Takasugi
Mastered by Chris Lewis, Lewis Audio, London
Produced by Chris Higginbottom
Executive Producer Christine Allen
Chris Higginbottom, drums
Born in London, Chris Higginbottom's musical life began at the age of 8 when he joined the Waltham Abbey choir, where he was eventually appointed head chorister. He began taking drum lessons at 11 and some his first experience was gained from playing for both the Essex and National Youth Jazz Orchestras.
Four years of study at the Royal Academy of Music resulted in a performance degree with first class honours in 2000, and in the same year his co-led group, the Higginbottom/Mayne Quartet was awarded the Perrier Young Jazz Band of the Year prize.
Chris went on to perform with many of the UK's leading artists including Tim Garland, Guy Barker and Christine Tobin, before moving to New York in the Autumn of 2002. He has since played with many great musicians including Mark Murphy, Eric Lewis, Ingrid Jensen and Gary Bartz and at numerous prestigious venues such as Birdland (New York), Blues Alley (Washington) and the Deer Head Inn (Pennsylvania).
Seamus Blake, tenor and soprano sax
New York based tenor sax player Seamus Blake is gaining increasing recognition
as one of the finest and most creative young players emerging in jazz.
His inclusion in the 1997 Downbeat Critics Poll as anartist deserving
of wider recognition attests to this fact. Pat Metheny has described him
as “the best tenor player I’ve heard in a couple of years”
(JazzTimes April 1997). John Scofield, who hired him for his ‘Quiet
Band’, calls him ‘extraordinary, a total saxophonist”.
He continues to tour with Scofield.
Born in England but raised in Vancouver, Canada, Blake was first asked to record at the age of 21 with drummer VICTOR LEWIS while Blake was still a student at Boston’s prestigious Berklee College. Following his graduation, Blake moved to New York, where he rapidly established himself on the New York scene. At 32, Blake now has 4 releases on Criss Cross Records, including the 1995 premiere release of the ”BLOOMDADDIES” a “funky, alternative grunge jazz” band featuring 2 electrified tenors, electric bass, vocals and 2 drums (Downbeat July1996). His latest for them entitled “Echonomics” features Dave Kikowski and Victor Lewis. A CD of originals entitled “Stranger Things Have Happened” has also just been released on the Fresh Sound label with Kurt Rosenwinkel, Jorge Rossy and Larry Grenadier. Blake is long standing member of the Mingus Big Band and is featured on their last three recordings for Dreyfuss. He continues to play and record with the Victor Lewis Quintet (Enja, Red), as well as with BILL STEWART and KEVIN HAYS (Blue Note Records). He has also recorded with FRANCO AMBROSETTI (Enja), MARK TURNER and BILLY DRUMMOND on Criss Cross. He placed 1st in the Thelonious Monk Jazz Competition in Feburary 2002. Since then he has been touring with the Dave Douglas septet and quintet. He has also been leading his own quartet with tours in the Us and Europe.
Aaron Goldberg, piano
Harvard graduate Aaron Goldberg is a young pianist and composer working at the forefront of jazz music. His studio debut "Turning Point" (J Curve) featured among others, saxophonists Mark Turner and Joshua Redman and vocalist Carla Cook and was followed by the release of his trio album "Unfolding"(J Curve Records). Aaron makes up one-third of the cooperative group OAM Trio, with Israeli bassist Omer Avital and Catalan multi-percussionist Marc Miralta. OAM has released two albums entitled "Flow" and "Trilingual" on the Fresh Sound/New Talent label and collaborated in 2003 with Mark Turner on the album "Live in Sevilla" (LOLA Records).
His latest project as a leader is entitled "Worlds", featuring his longstanding trio with special guests guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, vocalist Luciana Souza, and saxophonist Miguel Zenon. He is currently the musical director of 'All Souls at Sundown,'; a unique jazz and poetry performance series jointly organized by All Souls Church and Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. As a bandleader he currently performs with his trio and has been experimenting with an 'e-quartet'; featuring young saxophonist Eli Degibri.
As a sideman Aaron is best known for his work with the quartet of tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman, with whom he toured for three and a half years and recorded two albums for Warner Bros. Currently Aaron works with artists such as trumpeters Nicholas Payton, Tom Harrell, and Freddie Hubbard, master drummer Al Foster, guitarists Peter Bernstein and Kurt Rosenwinkel, vibraphonist Stefon Harris, and saxophonists Mark Turner and John Ellis among others. Goldberg has also worked alongside late great vocalist and first lady of jazz Betty Carter, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, saxophonists Michael Brecker, George Coleman, Jerry Bergonzi, Bill Pierce and Jimmy Greene, drummer Lenny White, bassist Buster Williams, vibraphonist Terry Gibbs and composers Guillermo Klein and Magali Souriau. www.aarongoldberg.com
Orlando Le Fleming-Bass
Orlando Le Fleming was born in Birmingham, England on July 7, 1976. Both
of his parents are professional musicians; his mother a cellist and his
father a composer.
His first ambition was to become a professional cricketer, an aim that
was realized when he played for five years in the minor counties.
After receiving a place at London's Royal Academy of Music, Orlando decided
to give up cricket and pursue his love of music. While based in London,
he quickly established himself as one of the UK's most prominent bass
players touring and recording with Jason Rebello, Julian Joseph, Desree,
Tommy Smith, Mica Paris, Jean Toussaint and Guy Barker. With the advantage
of being based in Europe, Orlando was also in demand to perform and tour
with visiting U.S. musicians such as Bill Charlap, Don Braden, Dave Liebman,
Jeff Watts, Joey Calderazzo and most notably, Branford Marsalis.
Since moving to New York in January 2003, Orlando has toured with Billy
Cobham's new group "The Art of Five", and most recently he has
become a permanent member of Jane Monheit's band.
Chris Higginbottom: One
(Review in Yorkshire Post by Andrew Vine 14/10/05)
Here’s an exceptionally fine record by another outstanding young British player, drummer Chris Higginbottom. It’s a no-nonsense, hard-driving set with Higginbottom leading a quartet that ranges through a programme of good originals and unhackneyed jazz standards with bristling attack. Higginbottom prefers to stroke the band’s fires than go front and centre for endless solos, and the music benefits. The young New York tenorman Seamus Blake shines, and there is excellent work from pianist Aaron Goldberg and bassist Orlando le Fleming.
23/12/2005 John Fordham the Guardian
This is the excellent contemporary straightahead quartet that toured
the UK in the autumn, led by British drummer Chris Higginbottom, with
hot American sidemen Seamus Blake (saxophone) and Aaron Goldberg (piano)
and expatriate UK bassist Orlando LeFleming. The pieces are a mix of postbop
standards by the likes of Wayne Shorter, Dizzy Gillespie and Herbie Hancock,
plus three tunes by the leader - the latter's Bill Evans-like meditations
a little upstaged by the comparison. But the improvisational and ensemble
playing is very sharp, and Goldberg is a bop-harmony-based contemporary
player of inexhaustible imagination and certainty of touch.
Blake is fleet and mercurial on Wayne Shorter's Ornette-like Blues a la
Carte and rugged and Rollins-like on a waywardly grooving account of Dizzy
Gillespie's Manteca. LeFleming's booming walk hesitates for no one, and
Higginbottom moves effortlessly but with crisp insistence across genres.
Hancock's The Sorcerer catches a surprising amount of the rhythmic ambiguity
and edgy tension of the 1960s Miles Davis version (with more fine extemporisations
from both Blake and Goldberg), and Bud Powell's Un Poco Loco is astutely
hauled into the John Coltrane era. Very sophisticated postbop.
HOME | CATALOGUE | ARTISTS | CONTACT | JAZZCDS | THE COMMITTEE | BASHO MUSIC