Rich Woodson

Lompoc, California-born guitarist/composer High Woodson lived in a variety of locales round the U.S. — like the SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA Bay Region; Nashville, Tennessee; and San Antonio and Austin, Tx — before learning to be a resident of this East Coastline magnet for innovative types, Brooklyn, NY, in the first ’90s. He brought with him a musical perspective refined elsewhere, nevertheless: specifically a public collection in Austin, where in fact the former hard rock and roll and velocity metal-influenced guitarist experienced acquainted himself with avant-garde jazz and 20th hundred years traditional music. The burgeoning self-taught composer translated his newfound curiosity into action, composing densely organised music inspired by famous brands Tim Berne, Frank Zappa, and Pulitzer Prize-winning modern traditional composer Charles Wuorinen. Then assembled an organization — Full Woodson’s Ellipsis — that could in fact translate his complicated ratings into musical truth, drawing from a few of the most achieved musicians on the brand new York avant jazz picture: drummer John Hollenbeck (Claudia Quintet), soprano saxophonist Peter Epstein, tenor saxophonist Aaron Stewart, and acoustic bassist Mat Fieldes. The ensemble’s documented debut, Control and Level of resistance, arrived in the Cuneiform label in 2000, and highlighted head-spinningly short and knotty multi-layered motifs in continuously permuting convolutions, preserving a herky-jerky momentum within a musical territory where innovative jazz, avant steel, and modern chamber music intersect. It had taken another five years for Full Woodson’s Ellipsis to concern a sophomore record; 2005’s separately released The Toe nail That STACKS UP Gets Pounded Down highlighted Woodson again joined up with by Hollenbeck, Stewart, and Fieldes, but with clarinetist Anthony Burr changing saxophonist Epstein. Using a back again cover happily asserting “THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO IMPROVISATION UPON THIS Documenting,” The Toe nail That STACKS UP continuing the conceptual thread of Control and Level of resistance, packing another assisting of ever-changing thick compositional textures right into a total of 40 a few minutes (three fewer a few minutes than its forerunner). While no more Full Woodson’s Ellipsis albums will be forthcoming in following years, the number of sonic materials packed in to the group’s two fairly concise albums may be seen by some as equal to the result of a far more standard jazz group’s whole recording career.