Suitcase Music
A collection of recordings from Matt Kendrick.
Click on cover artwork for link to purchase.
Acid Guitar, Bebop trumpet. The title says it all and nothing. This really is acid jazz. I don't know what that other stuff that the industry calls acid jazz is all about. I don't hear any jazz or acid anywhere.
A quintet cd of Jack King-electric guitar, Alan Neese-Trumpet and Rotomagnetic Horn, Steve Blake-Sax, Abdullah Rahman-Drums and Matt Kendrick-Double Bass. This cd is 74 minutes and explores some pretty wild terrain. "Wonder Bug" nice little rant. "Home Drive" "Face It" and more. "Going Blue Crazy" was a hit for me. For me it was hit. That means I got some airplay royalties from it. "Face It" is a psychedelic jam of bass, drums and guitar. Just like the old days except the bass is an acoustic one with heavey metal bowing. Heavy Wood? If you like bebop trumpet and acid guitar this is the cd for you. Acid Jazz for real.
A more straighahead jazz type cd with some great tunes on it. This one garnered a lot of reviews and they were all good for whatever thats worth. It was made with a grant from the NC Arts Council. This was my first one and nobody gave me any trouble. (write me and ask me what that means) They gave us money, we took it and did something cool with it. It is a quartet cd with some trios, some sextets, and "The Eternal Winds".
"The Eternal Winds" is an 8 piece jazz wind group.
About the Eternal Winds - Bass City has The Eternal Winds on two cuts; Cosmic Message and The Eternal Winds. This is a unique group of woodwinds and brass. They consist of Bassoon, Oboe, Flute, Bass Clarinet, Trombone,Trumpet, Tuba and French Horn. What happened is these Euroclassical players were not really a costumed to improvising.So I wrote out verbal instructions. Cosmic Message is interesting with each players improv note being based on their birth date. This is a Rosacurian table given to me by drummer, Roy Brooks. Each astrological sign has a corresponding note instead of an animal. This takes us out of the animal kingdom. I suppose this is desirable.So each player would play their note however they wanted for a specified number of bars. This results in cosmic chords. Underneath the rhythm section keeps a groove going. The results need to heard. I'm not going to try to describe the sound here. Furthermore, I don't know if I believe all that stuff or not but it makes pretty cool music. The Eternal Winds (the song) uses prescribed ways of playing the improv but leaves the notes up to the player. Instructions include trills, long tones, freak out FFF and so on. I would cue the players from instruction to instruction until the fabled "freak out triple forte" would come up. Then back to recapitulation of the theme and out. I came up with these little devices to enable the symphony players in this town to come up and play at the Jazz open mic night I have hosted on Tuesday nights for years. Tuesday is concert night for them and after the big show a lot of the musicians come and hang. They have their instruments and me not being one to overlook an opportunity to do something different .
A nice little duo cd with Fred Hersch on piano and Matt Kendrick on bass. A swinging cd that the critics could like. Mr. Hersch is great. The cd has some free stuff on it which is a side not often heard of Fred Hersch. The cd also has the chilling soundtrack of playwrite Stephen Jackson's "Lethel Dose 100". A play with a mostly solo bass score with wild electronic effects (on one little section) and whacking of the bass with a soft mallet. There are jazz standards such as "Have You Met Miss Jones" and "Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me." A solo upright version of Jaco Pastorius' song "Continuum" is also included. Pretty cool.
A daring cd that pushes boundrys. When will I learn that people are wary of this? Oh well, it came out great and we did it with money from the North Carolina Arts Council's Jazz composers Fellowship. I figured since I was using a grant I would do something envelope pushing and push it we did. Art/Jazz features a quartet setting of Double Bass-Matt Kendrick, Drums-Hugh Petersen, Sax-Steve Blake and Trumpet-Alan Neese. The unique thing about Art/Jazz is that the music is based on 7 paintings and one sculpture. The art is pictured in the 8 page cd booklet. Each artwork gets it's own page and is pictured in color from very high quality scans of the museum's transparencys. Getting permission to do this was a major undertaking but the museums all came through in a barter system. (cds for usage) The music is a mixture of free, out, free bop and bop usages of the Jazz language. Some of the stuff sounds new. Some sounds old. Some sounds bizzare. We recorded the project in two days direct to two track. It was a fun session. No problems. The musicians and the engineer all had prints of the art works to check out as we put the music down.
"Art/Jazz" was one of the editors picks for cd picks of the year, 1995, by Cadence Magazine.
Greensboro NC's own Alan Neese, a Jazz trumpeter/composer has released his first cd "The Omen Seeker" on the Suitcase Music label. Alan is also the recipient of 1995 North Carolina Jazz Composers Fellowship of $8000. He used the grant to record the CD which features standout local musicians: bassist/producer-Matt Kendrick, pianist-Ken Rhodes, drummer-Hugh Petersen and saxophonist-Steve Blake. The Omen Seeker was recorded in December 1995 at Reflection Studios in Charlotte, NC. The music was composed and arranged by Alan Neese and is "swinging Bebop based jazz with a modern spark." The 64 year old Neese is a well seasoned musician who spent 25 years in New York City. While there he performed with Charles Mingus, Jackie McLean, Freddie Redd, Dannie Richmond, Slide Hampton and more. Alan Graduated from UNC and studied composition with Hal Overton in New York. The Omen Seeker is a fully realized work of art by a man approaching legend status.
