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PRICE:
$13.00
IN STOCK
ARTIST
TITLE
Anchors
FORMAT
CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
TAO 016CD TAO 016CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
9/20/2024

"With Anchors, Chicago-based bass clarinetist-composer Jason Stein arises from a six-year hiatus as bandleader with his most personal, nuanced, and expansive album to date. A masterful player on this difficult-to-master reed instrument (Dolphy did it, too), Stein created Anchors together with bassist Joshua Abrams (Natural Information Society, of which Stein has been a member since 2017), drummer Gerald Cleaver (whose bona fides run deep and wide), and guest artist/co-producer Boon. Anchors is a suite of great beauty and potency, moving from meditative calms to lyrical buoyancy to gripping intensity and again to a transformative peace found in unity. Anchors are, so often, symbolic of strength and stability. They reflect peoples' capacity to steady themselves in turbulent waters, allowing them to traverse the deepest seas. With anchors aboard, listeners can quell their fears, weather the storm, and chart forth. In all their looming weight, anchors allow then to be free. With Anchors, Jason Stein emerges with a luminous tribute to anchors of his own. Amidst the discomfort of transformation, he reaches into a reservoir of resilience and invites listeners to do the same. Stein's purposefully chosen trio partners on this work, Joshua Abrams and drummer Gerald Cleaver, are two illustrious improvisers rooted as much in the jazz tradition as they are in contemporary experimental approaches. Abrams' grounding in multifarious music traditions gives way to a visionary synthesis of styles, perhaps most apparent in his acclaimed Natural Information Society. Stein has recorded and toured with the group since 2017, and the unmistakable intuitive interplay between these long-time collaborators is a through-line on Anchors. Gerald Cleaver, a definitive stylist in the international creative music community, works with Stein for the first time here, shaping the record with a skillful prowess as impressive as his distinctive sound."