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| 5.061 Ft
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| 1. | June 26th 07
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| 2. | The Chicken Went To Scotland
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| 3. | Green Target
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| 4. | She Moves Through the Fair
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| 5. | Banish Misfortune
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| 6. | Heather's Waltz Part 1: O'Farrell's Welcome to Limerick / The Arragh Mountains
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| 7. | Heather's Waltz Part 2: Gan Aithne
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| 8. | Heptagonesque
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| 9. | Worth Dying For
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| 10. | Green Target [Take 2]
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Jazz
Recorded April 2, 2010 at Twinz Recording Studio
DAVID BIXLER: alto sax
ARTURO O'FARRILL: piano
HEATHER MARTIN BIXLER: violin
CARLO DEROSA: bass
VINCE CHERICO: drums
ROLAND GUERRERO: percussion
Engineer: Katherine Miller.
Mastering by Mark Bunce.
Producer: David Bixler.
Photography : Jack Frisch and Jerry Lacay (photos Vince Cherico, Roland Guerrero, Carlo Derosa).
Package Design : Jack Frisch
Executive Producer: Joachim "Jochen" Becker.
On The Auction Project, New York alto saxophonist David Bixler and pianist Arturo O'Farrill, musical partners in the Chico O'Farrill Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra, fearlessly cross musical boundaries, improvising over traditional Irish jigs and original Bixler compositions, over a tapestry of Afro-Cuban percussion, in a fierce,freewheeling sextet session.
. The Auction Project was born out of a request for a high school fund-raiser in the form of an auction on Manhattan's Upper West Side in 2006. New York-based alto saxophonist rose to the challenge by forming a multi-cultural jazz sextet together with his frequent musical partner, pianist / composer Arturo O'Farrill.
With Juillard-trained violinist Heather Martin Bixler on board, her intense interest in Irish fiddling focused the new band's musical agenda on exploring traditional Irish music with an improvisational jazz
sensibility, and the richness of Afro-Latin percussion.
The Auction Project features 5 David Bixler originals, and 5 traditional Irish jigs and dance tunes going back to the 19th century – including "The Chicken went to Scotland", "She Moves Through the Fair", and "Banish
Misfortune".
This is Arturo O'Farrill's sixth ZOHO CD release since 2005. His 2008 release "Arturo O'Farrill & The Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra – Song for Chico" (ZMR 200804) won a GRAMMY in the Latin Jazz category in 2009. His last, 2009 CD release "Risa Negra" (ZMR 200910) made it to the "Best of
2009" Jazz CD lists of The Wall Street Journal, and the Village Voice, among others.
The Auction Project is Jazz with Afro-Celtic sympathies. This group was born out of a request in 2006 from the PTA at my daughter's school for me to put together a Latin jazz group for a fund-raiser in the form of an auction at her school on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Some parents involved knew I was a saxophonist, and of my association with the Chico O'Farrill Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra. Not really being involved in the "inner-circle" of Upper-Westside activist parents, I saw my opportunity to contribute and put out calls to my friends and colleagues, including my frequent musical partner, pianist / composer Arturo O'Farrill. To the best of my ability, I got a Latin-jazz group together. After playing this one gig at PS 75, my mind was racing with the idea of creating an outlet for the music that I was involved with that fell outside of the umbrella of "The David Bixler Quintet."
Around this same time my wife Heather Martin Bixler, a Julliard School-trained violinist, was looking to pursue music other than the New York free-lance scene, and had begun studying Irish fiddling. At first I didn't take it very seriously, but soon realized that Irish music was like jazz in a lot of ways, except that people liked it… Seriously, it is similar to jazz in that it is music passed on by aural tradition, and playing sessions and learning tunes are an integral part of the Irish tradition. When she would play me music that she was working on, there were certain tunes that I could envision reworking into a platform for jazz improvisation.
I thought it would be interesting to get the perspective of the music from someone listening from either side-one from the Latin/Jazz and the other from the Irish. Before I do I would like to give a little of the back story of my music.
The date described in June 26th 07 signifies the day after my oldest son graduated from high school. We were sitting around the house in a state of shock wondering what happened to the last seventeen years. Being a composer, I did what composers do and filtered this experience into sounds. One time, after hearing this tune performed, someone asked me if I loved my son.
Green Target takes its name from a Jasper Johns painting that hangs at New York City's MOMA. There was a season when I spent quite a bit of time there, and continually this painting captured my attention. In thinking about this painting this is what came out. Green Target - Take 2 is here for artistic reasons: it is the same tune, but it has completely different deserving solos. Consider it a bonus track - I think it interesting to present a window into the creative process to the serious listener.
While not my tune, I am envious of Banish Misfortune. I find so much joy in both the melody and the title. Much of what I write and am drawn to is dark, so when I heard this I wanted to latch on to this tune and try to inject that into this group.
Heptagonesque comes from a saxophone quartet that I wrote for the Ancia Saxophone Quartet and is recorded on their Naxos release, Short Stories. I took the basic groove from one of the movements as well as the melody and used it as basis for this tune.
Worth Dying For is an intensely personal offering for my family.
---David Bixler
As someone who's been involved in playing, presenting and writing about Irish traditional music in New York City for about 25 years, Heather Martin Bixler asked me to contribute a few words about the Auction Project's Irish tracks. I guess nobody warned her that I was a hard-core "purist" who might not be thrilled to hear jazz harmonies and Latin percussion applied to Irish song airs and dance tunes.
She needn't have worried. While today's Irish music lovers might not be accustomed to this sort of fusion sound, most don't realize that any sort of harmonic and rhythmic backing to Irish melodies is a fairly recent phenomenon. Traditional songs and dance tunes in rural Ireland were originally unaccompanied. And if songs such as "She Moved Through the Fair" or a jigs like "Banish Misfortune" could survive the heavy-handed piano backing that was de rigeuer in the "Golden Age" of 78 rpm recordings, or the ham-handed guitar strumming of early 60's folkies, they are not going to suffer from contact with the Auction Project's sophisticated Latin Jazz treatment!
"She Moved Through the Fair" is itself a bit of a fusion – a traditional song collected in County Donegal by Belfast musicologist Herbert Hughes, whose version of the melody was later married to lyrics by Irish poet Padraic Colum. It's a haunting melody that acquires additional layers of mystery in the Auction Project's arrangement. "Banish Misfortune" was a jig that became popular among musicians when it was included in Francis O'Neill's 1903 Music of Ireland, to which it was contributed by Tipperary fiddler Edward Cronin.
"Heather's Waltz" is actually a medley of slip jigs (aka "hop jigs"), dance tunes in 9/8 time. The first was published as "O'Farrell's Welcome to Limerick" in an early 19th century collection of piping tunes. The second, "The Arragh Mountains," is a composition of the late Tipperary button accordionist Paddy O'Brien. The third, which Heather picked up in a Belfast session, is a rhythmic reworking of County Fermanagh bouzouki player Fintan McManus' "The Guns of the Magnificent Seven," a reel that includes an odd measure with seven instead of the usual four beats. Don Meade
No matter how carefully you look at David Bixler, you won't see his swarthy Hispanic side. You talk to him and his accent gives nothing away. Apart from the neighborhood he lives in (decidedly Dominican) his day-to-day life reveals nothing. His family doesn't particularly look Nuyorican. His position as professor of jazz studies is in Bowling Green State University, a location not renowned for its mofongo or platanos.
So if it's not his looks, his speech, or his life, where exactly are his Afro- Cuban roots hiding? And then you hear it! It's in his playing and in his compositions that the passion is revealed. He has that declamatory style and spontaneous melodicism that is such a feature of our best soneros. He has an abandon that is born out of fire and ice colliding as it always does in the art of those who stand culturally in the midst of many worlds.
The Auction Project is very much about colliding cultures. Whether you call it Afro-Latin, Afro-Cuban, Afro-Celtic, Afro-Polka or Afro-whatever, he imbues every note he writes with information about the worlds we inhabit. It is a beautiful sense of syncopated drama that governs his music. This is why we have so much fun playing in each other's projects.
Two examples from the recording illustrate my point. "June 26 '07" has a laid-back cha cha cha feel that is genuine in its rhythmic authenticity. It also has a delightfully syncopated series of interwoven melodies that in the wrong hands could become dangerously thick and not groove-worthy, but in David's care the whole affair is seamless and quite effortless. Part of this has to do with the musicians he's picked. There is no room for inflexibility between Vince Cherico, Roland Guerrero and Carlo Dirosa. The ease and transition of styles genres and grooves is always lovely and musical.
"Heptagonesque" is a prime example of musical precepts that I aspire to, a groove driven, Afro-Latin 12/8 bass line, a sophisticated harmonic structure, a quirky jazzy melody, and honest, heartfelt abandonment in the improvisation. These are core musical values to me.
I sense that the project is also very much about the life of a jazz saxophonist/composer married to a classical violinist/Irish fiddler. Heather Martin Bixler is an extraordinary musician whose gentle and graceful performance on this recording is comprehensive in its knowledge of the different styles represented here.
Talk about colliding cultures there is plenty here for a Mexican, Cuban/Irish pianist to sink his teeth into. For a kid born in Mexico, there is a profound kinship with this child of the American heartland. He doesn't so much resemble Zorro as much as that he gets that twinkle in his eye which I've seen in a lot of my people. I think maybe David is Hispanglo. Arturo O'Farrill
David Bixler
Active Decades: '90s and '00s
Genre: Jazz
Styles: Bop, Post-Bop, Contemporary Jazz, Jazz Instrument, Guitar Jazz
A veteran sideman on the New York Jazz scene, alto saxophonist David Bixler has recently emerged as an accomplished, urbane bandleader and composer. Over the past eleven years, David has made a name for himself in the trenches of the New York City jazz scene. David has performed and toured with the orchestras of Toshiko Akiyoshi and Duke Ellington at prestigious venues including the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., Symphony Center in Chicago, the Snow Mass Jazz Festival in Aspen, CO, and New York's JVC Jazz Festival.
Since 2000 David has been a member of the Grammy-nominated Chico O'Farrill Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra, two years ago taking over the lead-alto chair. The band has toured through out Europe, North America and Central America in addition to performing at Birdland in New York City each Sunday. Additionally, during the fall of 2005, David performed with Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra at the historic Concert Hall in Shanghai, China.
During this time David began collaborating with trumpeter Scott Wendholt, guitarist John Hart, Ugonna Okegwa on bass, and Andy Watson on drums. David’s debut Jazz Quintet CD entitled Lost In Queens was released in May of 2000. In the fall of 2003, David released his second CD, Show Me The Justice, which received national airplay and critical praise for demonstrating David's creative abilities as composer as well as improviser. His current CD, Call It A Good Deal, is slated for release in July 2006 on the Zoho label and features all original compositions by David Bixler. Ever expanding his compositional parameters, a new work for alto saxophone and string quartet is to be debuted January 2007 with the South Dakota Symphony string quartet.
A native of Wisconsin, David completed a Bachelor of Music degree and the prestigious Performer’s Certificate from Indiana University. In addition to his talent as a musician and composer, David is also a jazz educator. He often gives master classes and presents clinics for students of all ages and he is a Visiting Specialist in Saxophone at Montclair State University in New Jersey.
David is married to violinist Heather Bixler. The Bixlers have four children and live in Harlem.
Arturo O'Farrill
Active Decades: '90s and '00s
Genre: Jazz
Styles: World Fusion, Latin Jazz, Post-Bop, Hard Bop, Afro-Cuban Jazz
An veteran figure of the Afro-Cuban jazz movement, Arturo O'Farrill was born in Mexico and grew up in New York City. The son of big band leader Chico O'Farrill, Arturo was educated at the Manhattan School of Music and the Brooklyn College Conservatory. From 1979-1983, he played piano with the Carla Bley Big Band; O'Farrill then went on to develop his skills as a solo performer with a wide spectrum of artists, including Wynton Marsalis, Dizzy Gillespie, Steve Turre, Papo Vazquez, the Fort Apache Band, Lester Bowie, and Harry Belafonte.
In 1995, O'Farrill agreed to direct Chico O'Farrill's Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra, which has been in residence at New York City's Birdland nightclub since the late '90s; the band also performed throughout the world. As a bandleader in his own right, O'Farrill recorded material for such labels as Milestone Records, 32 Jazz, and M & I. Those recordings (Blood Lines, A Night in Tunisia, and Cumana) provide listeners with an overview of the musical environment in which O'Farrill was raised. He also made appearances on numerous records, including Habanera with Alberto Shiroma and the soundtrack to the critically acclaimed movie Calle 54. Arturo was a special guest soloist at three landmark Jazz at Lincoln Center concerts -- Afro-Cuban Jazz: Chico O'Farrill's Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra, November 1995; Con Alma: The Latin Tinge in Big Band Jazz, September 1998; and the 2001 Jazz at Lincoln Center Gala: The Spirit of Tito Puente, November 2001. In March 2002, he was also the featured artist in Jazz at Lincoln Center's Jazz in the Schools Tour, when he led a Latin jazz quintet for 24 educational performances that reached over 5,000 people throughout N.Y.C. metropolitan schools. He again participated in this educational tour in 2002 and continued to direct the orchestra that preserved much of his father's music. 2008 saw him partnering with vocalist Claudia Acuña for In These Shoes, a stylish offering of jazz and Latin music.
---Paula Edelstein, All Music Guide |
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