Jason Anick & Jason Yeager
Released in March 2017
DownBeat Five-Star Review 2017
YouTube: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=tqyJcIclVY4&list=OLAK5uy_nabfiab-As925QRRvj5K9Ioir-3wpwqO4
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/4JGKc44VBOTIsXmwCs3aSX?si=o2tiSUhcQGO2VMTbiq9FUg
About:
Rejecting the confining roles of strict categorization, the Jason Anick/Jason Yeager Quartet draws on the wide swath of musical interests of its co-leaders, blending straight-ahead and post-bop jazz, world music, funk and pop, eagerly embracing what Anick and Yeager have defined as “jazz without borders.” Their debut album, United, displayed the virtuosic talents of both of these formidable instrumentalists. Featuring Jazz elites like Jason Palmer and George Garzone, United, garnered rave reviews including 4.5 stars from Downbeat Magazine.
For Anick and Yeager–friends since their teenage years, frequent collaborators, and now fellow Berklee instructors – The Anick/Yeager Quartet is both an artistic culmination of a long personal association and a statement of a shared musical aesthetic. Rounding out the quartet are jazz heavyweights Greg Loughman on bass and Mike Connors on Drums.
One of the youngest instructors at Boston’s Berklee College of Music and an award winning composer, Jason Anick is a co-founder and a featured member of the Rhythm Future Quartet, one of the preeminent neo-Gypsy Jazz outfits; he also leads his own contemporary jazz ensemble, and performs with the Grammy-winning guitarist John Jorgenson. With performances all over the world and renowned venues like the Montreal Jazz Festival, Blue Note, Scullers Jazz Club, Yoshi’s Jazz Club, and TD Garden, Jason has proven himself to be a leader in the ever-growing contemporary string world. Anick’s recordings as a leader include Sleepless, Tipping Point, and Travels.
Now based in New York City, Jason Yeager (whose own albums include Ruminationsand Affirmation) has considerable personal and professional ties to the New England area where he was born and raised. Currently teaching at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, where he is also one of the college’s youngest pianists on the faculty, Yeager graduated with honors from a double degree program at Tufts University and New England Conservatory. He has performed across the US and abroad in Argentina, South Africa, and Botswana. Among the artists with whom Yeager has performed are Greg Osby, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Linda Oh, Sara Serpa, Ayn Inserto and Ran Blake.
Track Listing:
1. Achi (Jason Yeager) 5:44
2. Bird’s Eye View (Jason Anick) featuring: Clay Lions 5:23
3. Well Red (Jason Anick) featuring: Jason Palmer 5:25
4. Stillness (Zbigniew Seifert) 2:18
5. Harlem Hoedown (Jason Yeager) featuring: Jason Palmer 8:03
6. Something (George Harrison) 5:17
7. Turbulent Plover (Zbigniew Seifert) featuring: George Garzone 5:46
8. Sweet Pea (Jason Yeager) 6:29
9. La Segunda (Jason Yeager) featuring: John Lockwood 5:02
10. All Blues (Miles Davis) 5:26
Personnel:
Jason Anick: violin, mandolin
Jason Yeager: piano
Greg Loughman: bass (1-3, 6-8)
Mike Connors: drums (1-3, 6-8)
John Lockwood: bass (5, 9)
Jerry Leake: percussion (5, 9)
Jason Palmer: trumpet (3, 5)
Clay Lyons: alto saxophone (2)
George Garzone: tenor saxophone (7)
Recorded January/March, 2016 at the Berklee College of Music by Mark Wessel
Mixed and Mastered by Dave Darlington
Produced by Jason Anick and Jason Yeager
Graphic Design by Simo Huovinen
Photography by Simon Yu
Review:
These two lifelong friends—and
now Berklee College of Music faculty colleagues—challenge and complement each
other throughout these 10 tracks. Their music appeals as much to the mind as
the spirit,
not because it’s impossibly intricate (it isn’t) but because it avoids excess.
Both Jasons and their guests improvise eloquently, but it’s the content of
their inventions, not any showiness or exploitation of clichés, that moves the
listener.
“Well Red,” for example, opens with a plucked string motif in 7/8, which unfolds through several composed passages into a “blowing session” of sorts. With drummer Mike Connors left free to nudge things along, trumpeter Jason Palmer stretches out with an understated, but wonderfully constructed solo. They approach simpler settings with intelligence and understatement. If one must point to a single track as the nest among United’s many gems, that might be “Sweet Pea.” Written as a tribute to Billy Strayhorn, it begins with Yeager alone, making the intention of his tune clear with delicate, arpeggiated chords played in a sighing rubato.
Bob Doerschuk (DownBeat)
