YELLOWJACKETS DAZZLE FRENCH AUDIENCE
IN NEW CONCERT DVD
New Morning: The Paris Concert due at retail on July 7, 2009
A performance by the Yellowjackets – purveyors of progressive jazz for nearly three decades – is an experience that has as much to do with sight as it does with sound. Any given performance on any given night by this seasoned quartet brings with it a degree of spontaneity and expression – on an individual as well as collective level – that can be best appreciated by seeing these four highly skilled musicians in front of a live audience.
New Morning: The Paris Concert (HUDV 7167) is a new DVD that takes you up close and personal with the Yellowjackets – keyboardist Russell Ferrante, saxophonist Bob Mintzer, bassist Jimmy Haslip and drummer Marcus Baylor – on stage at the New Morning, one of the most celebrated clubs in Paris. Recorded in March 2008, the DVD is scheduled for worldwide release on July 7, 2009 on Heads Up International, a division of Concord Music Group.
The DVD captures 90 minutes of live music at the New Morning. The disc also features “Soundcheck Sketches,” a brief but insightful segment narrated by Haslip, who introduces each band member and provides an overview of the Yellowjackets philosophy as a whole.
“The visual aspect of a DVD really adds a huge dimension to the Yellowjackets experience, especially for someone who may have never seen us before,” says Haslip, a charter member of the band that began as the backup unit for guitarist Robben Ford in 1981. “You’ll certainly get a lot more information about who we are and what we do than you would from a CD. You’re actually seeing the entire band in a performance setting. It’s an intimate look at the group. We don’t have a big stage production in our live performances. We’re just four guys up there, playing music from the heart in the most straightforward way we know how. There are no bells and whistles. It is what it is. And hopefully, it’s music that reaches out and touches whoever is listening.” read more
Track Listing: 1. Aha
2. Capetown
3. Bop Boy
4. Prayer For Peace
5. Cross Current
6. Dewey
7. With These Hands
8. Freedomland
9. Even Song
10. Downtown
11. Healing Waters
12. Evening News
YELLOWJACKETS DAZZLE FRENCH AUDIENCE
IN NEW CONCERT DVD
New Morning: The Paris Concert due at retail on July 7, 2009
A performance by the Yellowjackets – purveyors of progressive jazz for nearly three decades – is an experience that has as much to do with sight as it does with sound. Any given performance on any given night by this seasoned quartet brings with it a degree of spontaneity and expression – on an individual as well as collective level – that can be best appreciated by seeing these four highly skilled musicians in front of a live audience.
New Morning: The Paris Concert (HUDV 7167) is a new DVD that takes you up close and personal with the Yellowjackets – keyboardist Russell Ferrante, saxophonist Bob Mintzer, bassist Jimmy Haslip and drummer Marcus Baylor – on stage at the New Morning, one of the most celebrated clubs in Paris. Recorded in March 2008, the DVD is scheduled for worldwide release on July 7, 2009 on Heads Up International, a division of Concord Music Group.
The DVD captures 90 minutes of live music at the New Morning. The disc also features “Soundcheck Sketches,” a brief but insightful segment narrated by Haslip, who introduces each band member and provides an overview of the Yellowjackets philosophy as a whole.
“The visual aspect of a DVD really adds a huge dimension to the Yellowjackets experience, especially for someone who may have never seen us before,” says Haslip, a charter member of the band that began as the backup unit for guitarist Robben Ford in 1981. “You’ll certainly get a lot more information about who we are and what we do than you would from a CD. You’re actually seeing the entire band in a performance setting. It’s an intimate look at the group. We don’t have a big stage production in our live performances. We’re just four guys up there, playing music from the heart in the most straightforward way we know how. There are no bells and whistles. It is what it is. And hopefully, it’s music that reaches out and touches whoever is listening.”
The New Morning performance showcases what Mintzer describes as “the mixture of intricate ensemble playing with collective improvisation” that has been a hallmark of the Yellowjackets’ music since the very beginning – both in the performance setting and in their studio recordings. “This band offers the best of many different worlds, and that comes across in this DVD. Our approach is wide open and very democratic. Everybody has room to play anything, and everyone supports each other in the process. There’s always a very gratifying conversation taking place when we play.”
For all of the band’s inherent strengths, the ultimate success of New Morning: The Paris Concert is just as much about the audience as it is about the musicians on the stage, says Baylor. “The New Morning is a great place to play and record, because the crowd is right there and you can feel their energy,” he says. “It’s always great to be a part of a setting where you can feel a crowd’s energy, and they’re excited to be as much a part of the show as possible.”
The set gets under way with “Aha,” a syncopated piece that features Mintzer and Ferrante taking solos atop an arrangement of churning chord blocks. “Capetown,” the followup track, is a bit more melodic, with a few interludes that drift toward an intriguing atonality.
“Bop Boy” is a bit of brand new material not heard on any previous Yellowjackets recording. It’s a blues-based composition penned by Mintzer, who takes the clear lead with assistance from Baylor’s taut drum work. Further in, the breezy and melodic “Dewey” features tasty solo work from Haslip, while “With These Hands” follows a fiery Latin vibe.
The home stretch provides an eclectic juxtaposition of styles and grooves – the accelerated and intense “Downtown,” the quiet and gentle “Healing Waters,” and the driving closer, “Evening News.” This last piece provides a few moments in the spotlight for everyone on hand – most notably Haslip and Baylor – to deliver some solid solo work.
New Morning: The Paris Concert is a snapshot of one of the finest jazz bands in the world doing what comes naturally in front of an energized crowd. A simple formula, perhaps, but one that has served the Yellowjackets well for the better part of three decades. “Anyone who sees this DVD is watching four people enjoying what they do for a living,” says Haslip, “and also doing their best to deserve the gift of being able to stand in front of an audience and perform music that goes beyond words to an entirely different level of communication.”
Time changes everything. It’s a simple piece of wisdom that’s inescapable. Music – like every other aspect of our culture – is subject to various dynamic forces: technology, commerce, fashion, politics, you name it. The result is an evolution that is barely perceptible at any given moment, but inescapable over the long haul.
The Yellowjackets, cutting-edge purveyors of innovative, eclectic jazz for more than twenty-five years, are no strangers to this change. Indeed, they are agents of change. With every recording since their 1981 debut album – indeed with every note they’ve played in the studio and onstage since then – the Jackets have pushed the boundaries of improvisational jazz, and have been leaders in the music’s inescapable evolution.
The story of the Yellowjackets’ genesis is admittedly convoluted – a series of creative lefts and rights with fortuitous results. Keyboardist Russell Ferrante, bassist Jimmy Haslip and drummer Ricky Lawson first assembled as session players for jazz guitar virtuoso Robben Ford’s 1977 instrumental release, The Inside Story. Although Ford’s label wanted him to follow up with a more pop- and vocal-oriented album, the band – then known as the Robben Ford Group – preferred the instrumental approach. They renamed themselves the Yellowjackets, and released an album by the same name in 1981. Ford made appearances on their first couple recordings, then moved on to other projects. The band and its former leader parted on amicable terms after the release of Mirage a Trois in 1984.
“That was a very exciting time for instrumental music,” Ferrante recalls. “It seemed like a lot of people were open to mixing and matching various musical styles. There wasn't the strict compartmentalization that you see in radio now.”
With the success of innovative instrumental bands like Weather Report around the same time, crossing and merging genres had become a successful strategy, artistically as well as commercially. “There was no thought about whether this style should go with that one,” Ferrante adds. “Nothing was genre specific. It was just the music that we had all played – R&B music and electric music and acoustic music, blues, pop, the whole thing was just all music. We just did what came naturally.”
By 1987, Lawson had left the band and was replaced by William Kennedy, whose polyrhythmic sensibilities opened doors to an even greater sense of exploration – and a further departure from the familiar, Haslip recalls.
“During that time, I had been listening to a lot of African and Afro-Cuban music,” he says, “and I started writing in a lot of 6/8 patterns and experimenting with that kind of thing. I brought it over to Russ, and he was really interested in it. We started experimenting with a lot of polyrhythmic composition.”
The result was Four Corners, an album with a distinctly world music sensibility, and one of the Yellowjackets’ most commercially and artistically successful albums to date.
Subsequent albums – Politics (1988) and The Spin (1989) – dispensed with some of the multi-layered intensity of Four Corners and took a more acoustic direction. Greenhouse, released in 1990, welcomed tenor saxophonist Bob Mintzer into the Yellowjackets lineup. Mintzer’s dedication to the jazz tradition, along with his highly developed skills as an arranger, have since taken the ‘Jackets to a new level of sophistication over the past twelve years.
“It was very interesting,” Mintzer says of his early days with the band. “I was challenged. There was a way of playing and writing that had been in place for a while. I basically tried to step into that, acknowledge what had already been going on and add to that in some way.”
Haslip’s high praise picks up where Mintzer’s modesty leaves off. “Bob is an amazing musician,” he says. “He has a very distinct voice. He’s seriously steeped in the jazz tradition. He also has a very wide, eclectic view of composing, so he lends himself to what we are trying to do. He’s very much into experimentation, and he has his own big band, so his skills as an arranger are also very good to have on board.”
Throughout the ‘90s, the ‘Jackets continued to explore a diverse cross-section of sound and rhythm. The relaxed and mellow Dreamland, released in 1995, marked a brief reunion with Warner Brothers that also spawned Blue Hats in 1997 and Club Nocturne in 1998.
The Yellowjackets entered the new millennium with their self-released Mint Jam. Recorded live at the Mint in Los Angeles in July 2001, the two-disc set was nominated for a Grammy for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. Backing up the regular lineup of Ferrante, Haslip and Mintzer on Mint Jam is drummer Marcus Baylor, who has since become a permanent member of the band.
Time Squared, the follow-up to Mint Jam, was released on Heads Up International, a division of Concord Music Group, in May 2003. Their first studio recording in five years, Time Squared captures much of the energy and spontaneity that made Mint Jam a formidable Grammy contender.
In response to countless requests from fans over the years, the Yellowjackets released their first Christmas album in September 2004. Peace Round includes several traditional holiday songs, each with a unique contemporary jazz spin. Altered State, released in March 2005, continues to merge the traditional with the progressive by exploring unusual time signatures and exotic rhythms.
The Yellowjackets celebrated their milestone 25th anniversary with the CD/DVD release of the aptly titled Twenty-Five in May 2006. The CD portion of the two-disc set featured a live 2005 performance in Paris, while the DVD includes a second live performance filmed at the Naima Club in Forli, Italy, in October 2005. In addition to the concert footage, the DVD also includes interviews with current and past band members, retrospective performance footage and several other features.
In the summer of 2007, the Yellowjackets were joined by guitar virtuoso Mike Stern for some electrifying performances at the Montreal Jazz Festival. The dates served as the catalyst for Lifecycle, a ‘Jackets/Stern studio collaboration considered by many to be one of the most innovative and memorable jazz albums of 2008. The first Yellowjackets recording in 15 years to feature a guitar player, Lifecycle illustrates the kind of energy and creative brilliance that results when five talented players pool their individual skills as songwriters and musicians and merge into an entity that’s far greater than the sum of its parts.
New Morning: The Paris Concert is a new DVD that takes you up close and personal with the Yellowjackets on stage at the New Morning, one of the most celebrated clubs in Paris. Recorded in March 2008, the DVD is scheduled for worldwide release on July 7, 2009.
“The visual aspect of a DVD really adds a huge dimension to the Yellowjackets experience, especially for someone who may have never seen us before,” says Haslip. “You’ll certainly get a lot more information about who we are and what we do than you would from a CD. You’re actually seeing the entire band in a performance setting. It’s an intimate look at the group.”
