Jared Sims - Change Of Address (2017)

You could say that US saxophone man Jared Sims plays with spirt. Or perhaps, more accurately; spirits! Check out the third cut on his gorgeous new album “Change Of Address”, and let me explain…. The track is called “Ghost Guest 1979.” Six minutes and 40 seconds in duration. Like all seven cuts on the instrumental album, his fifth record as leader, Sims plays baritone sax and is joined by the very able skills of Steve Fell on guitar, Nina Ott on organ, Chris Lopes on bass and Jared Seabrook on drums.

The song penned by Sims, was inspired by eerie events which happened to him when he and his New Yorker wife lived in Boston next to a cemetery. He swears he would hear a ghost rustling about overhead when he practiced his instrument alone in his basement office. “Plays with spirit”…….see what I did there?

The album’s title comes from Jared and his wife re-locating to West Virginia after two decades in New England; coming back to West Virginia University where he has taken up the prestigious post as Director of its Jazz Studies department, 20 years after he earned his own jazz studies degree there.

Playing the baritone sax from fifth grade, he recalls the day he took a tenor sax in to his class at the New England Conservatory and got an earful from his tutor, about how he would never be great on it because he would be following in the footsteps of too many legends. For some, that kind of negativity may have ended their playing career and shattered their dreams. Not Jared though.

TRACKLIST

01. Offer For Wilson
02. Seeds Of Shihab
03. Ghost Guest 1979
04. Leap Of Faith
05. Forest Hills
06. Tower Of Fazenda
07. Lights And Colors