Chris Speed

A key person in the Brooklyn innovative jazz community, clarinetist and tenor saxophonist Chris Rate was raised in the Seattle area. Rate was first released to traditional music and performed the piano and clarinet before getting thinking about improvisation as well as the tenor saxophone during senior high school. He transferred to Boston to wait the New Britain Conservatory and was shortly area of the collaborative ensemble Individual Feel, which furthermore to Quickness highlighted drummer Jim Dark (also from Seattle), alto saxophonist Andrew D’Angelo, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, and bassist Joe Fitzgerald. Quickness was also an associate of Orange After that Blue, the innovative big music group led by drummer George Schuller (kid of Gunther). Two noteworthy recordings out of this early amount of Speed’s profession are Individual Feel’s Scatter (1992) and Orange After that Blue’s WHEN YOU Had been Out (1994), both over the GM Recordings label. Nevertheless, Speed’s greatest achievements would take place after he transferred to NEW YORK, starting when he became a member of several pioneering rings over the so-called “downtown picture.” These included Tim Berne’s Bloodcount, the Dave Douglas Sextet, and Myra Melford’s The Same River, Double, critically acclaimed as three from the 1990s’ best working rings in innovative jazz and improvised music. Quickness also remained an associate of Individual Experience, which survived its principals’ move from Boston and released two CDs being a quartet minus bassist Fitzgerald in the ’90s, and in addition reunited through the pursuing decade release a 2007’s Galore on Speed’s Skirl label. (Quickness also remained with Orange After that Blue when George Schuller’s ensemble shifted its bottom of functions to NY.) Notably, Bloodcount and Individual Feel continuing Speed’s romantic relationship with drummer Jim Dark. Performing jointly in these and various other subsequent downtown groupings, Quickness and Dark were extremely empathetic and strikingly like-minded collaborators in different musical settings. Quickness first became thinking about Gypsy music during his Boston times and along with fellow Orange After that Blue alumnus Matt Darriau became a respected NY musician linking jazz and innovative improvisation with Eastern Western european, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern folk music. The Pachora quartet was among Speed’s primary automobiles for discovering this element of his musical passions. Furthermore to Acceleration on clarinet, the music group presented Dark on dumbek, drums, and percussion aswell as Brad Shepik on Portuguese acoustic guitar and electrical saz and Skuli Sverrisson on electrical bass. Acceleration proven his mastery of interesting folk-flavored clarinet lines on Pachora’s energetic and groove-based music, that have been rendered having a modern edge while keeping an old-world taste. Pachora released three Knitting Manufacturer Functions CDs, Pachora (1997), Unn (1998), and Ast (1999), accompanied by a 4th recording, Astereotypical, on Winter season & Winter season (2003). While Acceleration was certainly a generating drive among four solid creative personalities in Pachora, he was most surely the man responsible for yeah NO, a quartet that probably better displayed the number of his musical eyesight. Quickness performed both tenor saxophone and clarinet using the group, which also highlighted trumpeter Cuong Vu (like Quickness a previous Seattlite who went to the New Britain Conservatory and performed with Orange After that Blue). Rounding out the foursome was Sverrisson on bass and, as expected, Jim Dark on drums. While Eastern Western european folk melodies and rhythms had been within the music of yeah NO, these affects were by no means treated being a stylistic restriction. Rather, the folk components were just one single section of a broader palette encompassing sharply concentrated and occasionally quite lyrical innovative jazz compositions, four-way collective improvisations, and explorations of atmosphere and structure. Like Individual Experience which preceded it, yeah NO frequently subverted the typical relationships between entrance line and tempo section. The four members, in virtually any mixture, would jointly or break aside, shift from the backdrop towards the foreground, or move from soloist to accompanist setting. The stylistic commonalities between middle-’90s Human being Experience and the later on yeah NO could possibly be seen as mainly attributable to the current presence of Speed and Dark in both rings. But it is usually interesting to notice that both quartets also experienced a web link in Sverrisson; the near future yeah NO bassist co-produced Human being Feel’s Talk with It, released from the Songlines label in 1996. Songlines also released three CDs by Velocity as well as the yeah NO music group, the first entitled just Yeah No (1997), accompanied by Deviantics (1999) and Emit (2000); Swell Henry adopted around the Squealer label (2004). While associated with Pachora and yeah NO, Velocity also led a trio including keyboardist Jamie Saft and drummer Ben Perowsky. This frequently hard-swinging unit presented a few of Speed’s most strong clarinet and tenor function, along with incendiary Hammond body organ support from Saft and splashy drumming from Perowsky. The Chris Speed Trio’s Iffy, released on Knitting Manufacturing plant Functions in 2000, highlighted the reedman’s edgy and exciting strategy along with touchstones to relatively even more traditional and mainstream components of post-bop, soul-jazz, and groove jazz. While active with his single profession, Speed appeared being a sideman in groupings fronted by Tag Dresser, Adam Emery, and Ben Perowsky. He added to several recording periods led by Dave Douglas, showing up on such albums as the Dave Douglas Sextet’s 2000 discharge Soul on Spirit (the trumpeter’s extremely acclaimed Mary Lou Williams tribute Compact disc) and the next year’s ambitious See, both albums released by RCA Victor. He also became a member of the Balkan road band-styled Slavic Spirit Party!, appearing in the albums In Makedonija (Knitting Manufacturer Functions, 2002) and Larger (Barbes Information, 2006), aswell as two organizations led by drummers, his longtime collaborator Jim Black’s AlasNoAxis quartet and John Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet, showing up around the AlasNoAxis albums AlasNoAxis (2000), Splay (2002), Habyor (2004), Canines of Great Indifference (2006), and Houseplant (2009), all released by Winter season & Winter season, and such Claudia Quintet albums mainly because I, Claudia (2004), Semi-Formal (2005), For (2007), Royal Toast (2010), WHAT’S the stunning? (2011), and Sept (2013), all released by Cuneiform Information. In 2006 Velocity founded the impartial Skirl Information label, focused on documenting the task of Brooklyn performers whose music is usually centered on innovative jazz but transcends stylistic limitations. He made an appearance on many of the label’s produces (all offering artwork by Karlssonwilker and DVD-sized digipaks), including two albums from the Clarinets, an eponymous debut (2001) and Continue Going SUCH AS THIS (2011); two albums by trombonist Curtis Hasselbring’s New Mellow Edwards quartet, THE BRAND NEW Mellow Edwards (2006) and Big Choantza (2009); these Galore with the reunited Individual Experience (2007); two albums by Endangered Bloodstream, the quartet’s eponymous debut (2011) and Function Your Magic (2013); and Ruins (2014), with the duet of Swiftness and Italian drummer Zeno De Rossi. In 2013 Swiftness also made an appearance on another Curtis Hasselbring record, the conceptual Amount Channels, released by Cuneiform and offering Hasselbring leading a septet including associates of both New Mellow Edwards and another from the trombonist’s ensembles, Decoupage. After ten years of significant efforts to varied collaborative endeavors, Swiftness stepped out with a fresh album being a head, Really Fine, released by Skirl in 2014. The recording presented the reedman specifically on tenor saxophone, leading a trio with Dave Ruler (the Poor Plus, Content Apple, Buffalo Collision) on drums and Chris Tordini (Okkyung Lee, Claudia Quintet) on acoustic bass. The recording, consisting primarily of initial compositions but also like the regular “Most of Me,” Ornette Coleman’s “Circular Trip,” and John Coltrane’s “26-2,” discovered Speed sketching from custom but placing his own exclusive spin within the traditional saxophone-bass-drums trio type. Chris Speed’s creative achievement as both bandleader and sideman arrives at least partly to his determination to come out from the spotlight and present his collaborators a lot of room expressing themselves. Swiftness is certainly a powerful soloist; he possesses a pleasant round tone in the clarinet and his wailing tenor could be effective at even noiseless amounts. He also uses an array of expanded methods on both his horns, and it is extremely imaginative in finding brand-new textures and timbres to explore. However even in groupings he leads, Rate surrounds himself with music artists whose styles frequently command identical if not better interest than his very own. It really is a way of measuring Speed’s maturity as an musician that he avoids personal grandstanding and brings about the very best in his bandmates. Rate remains centered on the sound of the group all together, and how all of the players can donate to a distinctive collective statement.