Personnel:
Matt Pavolka (b, tb), Kirk Knuffke (cnt), Loren Stillman (as), Jacob Garchik (tb), Mark Ferber (d)
Reference: FSNT-447
Bar code: 8427328424479
The Horns Band is Matt Pavolkas new project that features horns. Its kind of like his other band except its different and there are horns. Not just any old horns, and not just any horn players. Kirk Knuffke, Loren Stillman and Jacob Garchik are three of the finest and the collective might of their wind-powered onslaught will leave you... breathless.
"In his composing for The Horns Band, bassist and trombonist Matt Pavolka unites unusual progressions with appealing melodies like Lullaby and The Evolution of Electric Light. The front line of cornetist Kirk Knuffke, trombonist Jacob Garchik, and alto saxophonist Loren Stillman is first-rate.
Theyre all fiercely individual soloists as well as team players happy to blend their sounds, and the soul beat of Acid Metacognition (love those titles!) gets things off to a fiery start with a Jazz Messenger-flavored tune complete with vamp sections and pithy solos over riffing horns. Its a perfect welcome to the quintets unabashed swing, peppered with free-wheeling solos. A riff-based tune like Guermo gives Pavolka the bassist a turn in the spotlight, with his forceful playing the focus alongside the slip-sliding horns and Matt Ferbers confidently tempo-shifting drum parts. Ferber is an especially attentive drummer, right in the thick of things. Most of the baroque-sounding Vheissu is arranged, to its advantage, as a conversation between the drums and everyone else.
What I like best about this album are the balances between it strikes between solos and the larger ensemble and between written and improvised material, though Im likely fooling myself if I think I can always tell the difference. Always trust a band that can lay down a solid groove. With potent examples here like The Evening Redness in the West and Anti-Green Plate Gives Mr. H. More Power, there should be no doubt that The Horns Band is well worth your trust and your attention."
http://skremsky.tumblr.com/
December 23, 2015
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"For The Horns Band, bassist and trombonist Matt Pavolka unites unusual progressions with appealing melodies like Lullaby and The Evolution of Electric Light. The front line of cornetist Kirk Knuffke, trombonist Jacob Garchik, and alto saxophonist Loren Stillman is first-rate. Theyre all fiercely individual soloists as well as team players happy to blend their sounds, and the soul beat of Acid Metacognition (love those titles!) gets things off to a fiery start with a Jazz Messenger-flavored tune complete with vamp sections and pithy solos over riffing horns.
Its a perfect welcome to the quintets unabashed swing, peppered with free-wheeling solos. A riff-based tune like Guermo gives Pavolka the bassist a turn in the spotlight, with his forceful playing the focus alongside the slip-sliding horns and Matt Ferbers confidently tempo-shifting drum parts. Ferber is an especially attentive drummer, right in the thick of things. Most of the baroque-sounding Vheissu is arranged, to its advantage, as a conversation between the drums and everyone else. What I like best about this album are the balances between it strikes between solos and the larger ensemble and between written and improvised material, though Im likely fooling myself if I think I can always tell the difference. Always trust a band that can lay down a solid groove. With potent examples here like The Evening Redness in the West and Anti-Green Plate Gives Mr. H. More Power, there should be no doubt that The Horns Band is well worth your trust and your attention.
Stuart Kremsky (September 2015)
Journal of the International Association
of Jazz Record Collectors (IAJRC)
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"Pavolka goes in for considered, thoughtful music-making, which thanks to his simultaneously slight yet rigorous methodology results in a programme which catches the ear with repeated exposure. Both Knuffke, with Ted Brown for example, and Stillman have got form, and while this music might be viewed as an updated and oblique take on the Tristano school, the fact remains that in places its both too hot and too rhythmically animated to fall in with that ideal. To be sure, it can be regarded as downright intriguing."
-Nic Jones (Jazz Journal, October 2015)
http://www.jazzjournal.co.uk
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"Theres a smattering of high-literary references on The Horns Band (Fresh Sound New Talent), an engrossing new album by the jazz bassist Matt Pavolka. Dont get too hung up on them, or you might scare up more questions than answers begin to wonder, for example, why Vheissu, inspired by Thomas Pynchons novel V, worries a single melodic phrase in a way that seems better suited to Recollected Forward, named after Kierkegaards concept of repetition. Anyway, what matters is Mr. Pavolkas intently soulful writing for the cornetist Kirk Knuffke, the trombonist Jacob Garchik, the alto saxophonist Loren Stillman and the drummer Mark Ferber. Drawing from contemporary strategies as well as the small-group music of Duke Ellington, his compositions accomplish a lot with earthy beauty and shifting momentum. At their best, as on That Night the Blind Man Dreamt That He Was Blind (for José Saramago), they suggest a gradually forming picture."
Nate Chinen (September, 2014)
The New York Times
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"Is this good music for reading? Its a fair question, since all the compositions on bassist and occasional trombonist Matt Pavolkas new album are named in tribute to books by Cormac McCarthy, José Saramago and Thomas Pynchon, among others. So, would The Horns Band provide pleasing accompaniment, or a distraction? Probably the latter, but thats a good thing.
The Horns Band is aptly namedthe frontline is composed of Kirk Knuffke (cornet), Loren Stillman (alto saxophone) and Jacob Garchik (trombone), backed by Pavolka and drummer Mark Ferber. These are highly regarded players on the New York scene, capable of bringing new ideas to virtually any situation and here they overcome what could initially seem to be a strong limitation. The three horns blend together into a swirling fog; unaccompanied solos are extremely rare. Almost every time one man takes the spotlight, the other two are swaying back and forth behind him.
On the ballad Lullaby, the rich tones of cornet and trombone harmonize effortlessly behind the saxophone, like old-time singers backing a romantic crooner. On the klezmer-ish mood piece That Night the Blind Man Dreamt That He Was Blind, by contrast, the threesome wind around each other like dancers. And when the tempo gets more frantic, as on the opening Acid Metacognition, everyone jumps and bounces, at times launching into joyous polyphony. Behind all this harmony, Pavolka and Ferber are working just as hardas their frontline compatriots. A tight, telepathic rhythm team, they lock into hard-swinging grooves that keep the horns from drifting too far afield and make sure they give everything theyve got.
This is a surprising album in many waysa display of collective effort that nevertheless still permits individual expression to shine through; a set of thoughtfully written compositions that gives the illusion of being a blowing session; a tribute to great literature thats almost perversely ill-suited to serve as background music."
Phil Freeman (October, 2014)
The New York City Jazz Record
