2008 was a productive year for the Empty Cage Quartet. During the summer we spent two weeks in Montpellier, France where, with support from a Chamber Music America French-American Cultural Exchange grant, we collaborated with the brilliant French duo of Aurélien Besnard (clarinets) and Patrice Soletti (guitar) on a series of rehearsals and performances of original new music for the sextet, culminating in a three-day recording session at Studio Lakanal in Montpellier. The result of that collaboration is the new recording Take Care of Floating, recently released in Europe on the Rude Awakening label.

Despite limited time and a language barrier that was sometimes problematic, Aurélien and Patrice were an immediate and natural fit with our quartet, and these sessions forge a pretty fascinating union of European free improvisation with American jazz-inspired creative music. While we were in France I documented the collaboration in a fairly extensive photo blog that is archived here and here.

Tech-savvy listeners will appreciate the fact that this CD is being released with two distinct mixes embedded on the disc – one engineered specifically for traditional hi-fi stereo systems, and another that is optimized for mp3 listening (the mp3 files appear in a separate folder when the disc is inserted into a computer drive). This innovative solution to the nagging problem of digital audio fidelity is the result of a process that was created by engineer Pierre Vandewaeter at Studio Lakanal.

Take Care of Floating is available now on the Rude Awakening website, and you can listen to an exclusive preview at Last.fm. The album is scheduled for US release shortly, and will be available on iTunes, eMusic etc. soon after.

Gravity No. 1: Section 4 by kristiner

Following the France trip, in September of last year we spent a week on the East Coast, giving performances at Bennington College in Vermont, the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, NY and in Manhattan where we performed a concert that was sponsored jointly by the annual Clean Feed Festival and the Festival of New Trumpet (FONT) Music. Directly following these performances we hunkered down for two days at Park West Studio in Brooklyn to record two new extended works – the Tzolkien series by Jason Mears and my own first series of Gravity compositions. That recording is out now on Lisbon-based Clean Feed Records. Here is the official press release:

Gravity is the new release by the Empty Cage Quartet, a group that The Wire magazine has called “one of the best things in jazz to emerge in the new millennium.” Saxophonist Jason Mears, trumpeter Kris Tiner, bassist Ivan Johnson and percussionist Paul Kikuchi are featured here in one of their most focused and exciting performances on record. The music is comprised of two extended compositions that incorporate improvisational systems based on harmonic palindromes and melodic sequences derived from the cycles of the Mayan calendar. Although these musicians are well-schooled in contemporary and experimental methods of composition, there is nothing overtly intellectual or academic about the musical result. This band is equally at home whether navigating the intricacies of modern chamber music, pounding out a funky groove, or blazing through waves of freebop energy. And they do it all with a bold intensity that is well-honed from years of touring and performing together. This is music that forges a rare union of numerological complexity and visceral groove, brain and guts. And that’s what makes this band so special – their music continues to expand and deepen with each new release, reaching toward, in the words of one critic, an “urban folk music of the future.”

And here’s an early review (a good one, thankfully!), by Troy Collins at All About Jazz.

We are planning several CD release concerts (possibly a full-on tour) for early in 2010. Keep an eye on this site for updates, or become a fan of the Empty Cage Quartet on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.