Caroline Davis - Heart Tonic (2018)
WEB FLAC (tracks) ~ 351.47 Mb | MP3 CBR 320kbps ~ 142.37 Mb | 01:01:48 | Cover
Contemporary Jazz, Saxophone | Country: USA (Brooklyn, NY) | Label: Sunnyside Records
WEB FLAC (tracks) ~ 351.47 Mb | MP3 CBR 320kbps ~ 142.37 Mb | 01:01:48 | Cover
Contemporary Jazz, Saxophone | Country: USA (Brooklyn, NY) | Label: Sunnyside Records
For the past four years, saxophonist/composer Caroline Davis has been tied up in matters of the heart. Her focus is multi-tiered, however. There are the metaphorical facets, including her feelings about her recent relocation to New York from her longtime home in Chicago and the emotional rigors of navigating the path of an itinerant musician within the City’s bustling jazz scene. There is also a more physiological aspect, as Davis has actively researched the life giving organ and its properties in dealing with her father’s own heart ailment. All of these forces come to bear on her new recording, Heart Tonic.
Born in Singapore to a Swedish mother and British father, Davis grew up in the United States from the age of six, settling first in Atlanta, then Texas and ending up in Chicago, where she attended Northwestern University and received a Ph.D in Music Cognition. It was in Chicago that Davis became engrained within the local jazz and improvisatory music community, one that is tight knit, diverse and particularly open to each player’s musical inclinations.
Davis’s Chicago experience was instrumental in her development as a player. Regularly hearing local greats, like saxophonist Von Freeman, guitarist Bobby Broom, and pianist Ron Perrillo, playing in wide ranging musical contexts and interdisciplinary collaborations helped to shape her into a well balanced and genre defying artist. Davis was also privy to a range of artists, including one of her biggest influences, the iconoclastic composer/conceptualist Steve Coleman.
Upon her move to New York City in 2013, Davis found herself as an outsider looking in. It was difficult to come from a place where she was established to an entirely different community, especially one as fractious as New York’s. Though, Davis soon showed that she was equal to its demands.
The roller coaster lifestyle of working as a professional musician in New York was challenging. Davis quickly saw that her days would have some career highpoints alongside humbling lows of everyday musician life. Friends like drummer Jay Sawyer helped her overcome her blues by coming along to sessions and gigs, thus helping establishing herself in the scene. Soon, Davis began to play more regularly with a diverse group of musicians, including Matt Mitchell, Greg Saunier, Billy Kaye, and Curt Sydnor.
It was about this time that Davis found out that her father had heart arrhythmia. The news prompted her to do detailed research on the physical aspects of the human heart.
It was with all of this in mind that Davis decided to compose this music, using the heart for its emotional connotation or utilizing ventricular rhythms as metrical devices. Composing helped not only in her emotional transition but also focused her study on biological aspects of the body. Heart Tonic finds Davis employing more standard jazz elements than in the music of her previous work, including formal harmonic changes and shifting meters.
To assist in the recording, Davis employed a brilliant ensemble of young musicians, more aligned to swinging, straight ahead jazz, but who could also handle the challenges the composer posed for them in her idiosyncratic music. Pianist and keyboard player Julian Shore and percussionist Rogerio Buccato had been friends with Davis since her time at Litchfield Jazz Camp nearly a decade ago. Trumpeter Marquis Hill is a Chicago contemporary and a perfect foil for Davis’s lithe alto. Originally from Israel, Tamir Shmerling is unwavering on acoustic and electric bass, while longtime friend and drummer Jay Sawyer always insures the music is remarkably propulsive.
The recording begins with the churning “Footloose and Fancy Free,” a piece that relies on a cyclical bassline echoing the cycle of the heart’s superior and inferior vena cava leading to the brain and back but with an unconstrained melody singing above that anchor. The plaintive “Loss” is an introspective and emotional piece that was written quickly after a truncated musical connection in Chicago after Davis’s move, featuring Rogerrio Boccato on percussion. The swinging “Constructs” is a suite concerned with the insistency to make up words for the intangible, like using “heart” as a metaphor for honesty, bravery or sympathy. The waltzing “Fortune” is a thankful tribute to the new people and projects Davis has been involved with since relocating. It also features Benjamin Hoffmann on organ. “…TuneFor” is a drum feature for Sawyer stemming from “Fortune.”
Wayne Shorter’s “Penelope” lent itself to the project as its heart beat like pulse is reminiscent of the rhythms her father’s arrhythmia was making in his own heart. Originally written for another album, Davis rewrote “Dionysian” in New York with a new mindset eschewing the filters of frustration that had limited her on her arrival; it provides an emphatic proclamation of place. The haunting “Air” floats on a bassline in 7 while the rest of the instruments play in 4, thus generating an ambiguous but stable cycle and bedrock for Shore’s lovely piano solo. The stirring “Ocean Motion” closes the recording with a piece in 9/4 in three sections, which leaves the listener with a healing final melody and incendiary drum solo.
Caroline Davis’s new Heart Tonic is a moving and pulse livening journey through Davis’s emotional relocation from Chicago to New York and her investigation of the biology of the heart.
Caroline Davis - alto saxophone
Marquis Hill - trumpet
Julian Shore - piano, Fender Rhodes, Yamaha DX7, Roland JD-Xi
Tamar Shmerling - acoustic & electric bass
Jay Sawyer - drums
Rogerio Boccato (percussion 2, 9)
Benjamin Hoffman - organ (4, 5)
Track List:
01. Footloose And Fancy Free 07:58
02. Loss 08:09
03. Constructs 10:32
04. Fortune 05:18
05. …TuneFor 01:27
06. Penelope 04:11
07. Dionysian 07:27
08. Air 08:53
09. Ocean Motion 07:48
–––––––––––-
DON'T MODIFY THIS FILE
–––––––––––-
PERFORMER: auCDtect Task Manager, ver. 1.6.0 RC1 build 1.6.0.1
Copyright © 2008-2010 y-soft. All rights reserved
http://y-soft.org
ANALYZER: auCDtect: CD records authenticity detector, version 0.8.2
Copyright © 2004 Oleg Berngardt. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2004 Alexander Djourik. All rights reserved.
FILE: 01 - Footloose and Fancy Free.flac
Size: 48820884 Hash: F53FCB9B6053386364002E5A9831171F Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 6CB31FEE93EFB67C87B7303F8B947993D4B87433
FILE: 02 - Loss.flac
Size: 47496805 Hash: 815DBB869A025DA7AD6B03A3898F0D02 Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 99%
Signature: 7DAF3240BA64486685F92E360C5B097327848F0E
FILE: 03 - Constructs.flac
Size: 65801838 Hash: 47697F0B0E12D6911507B62D31CCE2A5 Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 9CD745E1D8745625014B3085BD56918E8B847E41
FILE: 04 - Fortune.flac
Size: 30653918 Hash: 6099A29E5BF29D9066C3E1E32982D46C Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: B31D59F59A1D03597535AAA22A8903E75541D476
FILE: 05 - …Tunefor.flac
Size: 9037369 Hash: 92351907313AA6D4CC1318D8EF101C70 Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 6E4D904966429BE7D92ACCAB88F839D98CC56DA8
FILE: 06 - Penelope.flac
Size: 25305850 Hash: 33959F84983FEC73C19B98CA7E101707 Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 1D7C0C9F20E9B677161E3022CE178F445280C009
FILE: 07 - Dionysian.flac
Size: 43592443 Hash: 524293A8F78C7069508B403E4C19295B Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: C4DF26308DD639E2B7A9F76C75688666382CC48E
FILE: 08 - Air.flac
Size: 49185764 Hash: 24EFBD3C9630BBF4B02B215ED0EF7C13 Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 4E3B3751AC1E861EC9A1DCBA9B52819423F5E96E
FILE: 09 - Ocean Motion.flac
Size: 48531092 Hash: 08A20098AFD868A3B5B2DE59D1120E11 Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 7D8BCCA859F7CBA295326CCA8A6DDE0365D680A2
DON'T MODIFY THIS FILE
–––––––––––-
PERFORMER: auCDtect Task Manager, ver. 1.6.0 RC1 build 1.6.0.1
Copyright © 2008-2010 y-soft. All rights reserved
http://y-soft.org
ANALYZER: auCDtect: CD records authenticity detector, version 0.8.2
Copyright © 2004 Oleg Berngardt. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2004 Alexander Djourik. All rights reserved.
FILE: 01 - Footloose and Fancy Free.flac
Size: 48820884 Hash: F53FCB9B6053386364002E5A9831171F Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 6CB31FEE93EFB67C87B7303F8B947993D4B87433
FILE: 02 - Loss.flac
Size: 47496805 Hash: 815DBB869A025DA7AD6B03A3898F0D02 Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 99%
Signature: 7DAF3240BA64486685F92E360C5B097327848F0E
FILE: 03 - Constructs.flac
Size: 65801838 Hash: 47697F0B0E12D6911507B62D31CCE2A5 Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 9CD745E1D8745625014B3085BD56918E8B847E41
FILE: 04 - Fortune.flac
Size: 30653918 Hash: 6099A29E5BF29D9066C3E1E32982D46C Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: B31D59F59A1D03597535AAA22A8903E75541D476
FILE: 05 - …Tunefor.flac
Size: 9037369 Hash: 92351907313AA6D4CC1318D8EF101C70 Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 6E4D904966429BE7D92ACCAB88F839D98CC56DA8
FILE: 06 - Penelope.flac
Size: 25305850 Hash: 33959F84983FEC73C19B98CA7E101707 Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 1D7C0C9F20E9B677161E3022CE178F445280C009
FILE: 07 - Dionysian.flac
Size: 43592443 Hash: 524293A8F78C7069508B403E4C19295B Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: C4DF26308DD639E2B7A9F76C75688666382CC48E
FILE: 08 - Air.flac
Size: 49185764 Hash: 24EFBD3C9630BBF4B02B215ED0EF7C13 Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 4E3B3751AC1E861EC9A1DCBA9B52819423F5E96E
FILE: 09 - Ocean Motion.flac
Size: 48531092 Hash: 08A20098AFD868A3B5B2DE59D1120E11 Accuracy: -m0
Conclusion: CDDA 100%
Signature: 7D8BCCA859F7CBA295326CCA8A6DDE0365D680A2
More Music in My Blog
Follow My RSS Channel
Follow My RSS Channel