Mat Maneri Quartet - ASH CD Release
Join the Mat Maneri Quartet as they celebrate the release of their album ASH! Two shows at 5-7 p.m., in-person and livestream tickets available!
Mat Maneri, viola
John Hebert, bass
Lucian Ban, piano
Randy Peterson, drums
Mat Maneri envisages his music as one of activity in stasis, or motion within stillness. His music continues from the lineage of master improvisers Paul Bley and Paul Motian (with whom Mr. Maneri has played in the past) with a sound that is distinctly his own and developed over decades of discovery and practice. Following his acclaimed 2019 ‘Dust’ album Sunnyside records announces Mat Maneri’s – ASH – the second installment from his trilogy for quartet. The new recording showcases his stirring playing in a program of open-ended compositions that showcase his unique marriage of jazz and microtonal music alongside an ensemble of modern master improvisers: drummer Randy Peterson, pianist Lucian Ban, and bassist John Hébert. If a certain elusiveness permeated the first album, “Dust”, with ASH comes the permanence of memories burned into the mind, of songs triggered by scenes past from decades before, of what poet Denver Buston, who penned poems for each track on the album, calls “all that’s left is this what was once something before it was ash.”
From the first piece, its title track, the album explores extending the boundaries of what you can create in, of how various sources – a viola sonata from Brahms, a motive from an improvisation by Joe Maneri, or a Sicilian lullaby – can be filtered through a certain microtonal group approach to push the parameters of what a jazz quartet can do today. Silence and memories can be equal sources to create music in the moment with both poetic imagination and a narrative sense within an improvised performance.
”Mat Maneri has changed the way the jazz world listens to the Violin & Viola” – All About Jazz
