Creative chamber jazz in the fullest sense of the term. Composer-drummer Harris Eisenstadt and master bassist Mark Dresser provide the jazz ingredients while bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck and flautist Nicole Mitchell add flourishes in contemporary chamber music idiom. Crystal-clear engineering captures the subtle nuances of the quieter improvisational sections. Check out the wide dynamic range and lyrical playing on “Sandy, a standout track. As on many of Songlines releases in this period, John Raham’s mixing skill brings out the best of the original hi-res recording. – Mark Werlin, All About Jazz
Toronto-born, New York based drummer Harris Eisenstadt added a different flavor to his impressive list of active projects with this intriguing bi-coastal quartet, his fifteenth record as leader since 2001. As Harris tells it, “Golden State continues a career-long interest in writing for orchestral instruments in chamber and improvising contexts….As to the group’s genesis, I was offered a short residency at CalArts fall 2012 by Leo Smith and my old mallet teacher David Johnson…I was thinking about sounds and textures that interest me, and musical personalities that interest me. Of course the combination of flute and bassoon timbres is fantastic…I’d wanted to put Sara and Nicole Mitchell together in a small group for years – I’d heard them together in the Anthony Braxton 12tet and loved how they interacted….I’ve worked with Mark Dresser periodically over the last ten years. He’s such a singular force and makes any group he’s in sound huge. His unique vocabulary is a perfect foil for Sara and Nicole.…I wanted to devise a bunch of different pieces that took advantage of these musicians’ great skills as improvisers and interpreters – lots of off-kilter grooves, soloistic moments, group improvisations, 1, 2, and 3 part writing, sometimes interpreted strictly, sometimes freely.” The result is a highly rhythmic, wonderfully expressive, conversational music that takes chamber jazz further in directions suggested by Eric Dolphy, Yusef Lateef, and the AACM (especially Wadada Leo Smith and Henry Threadgill.)
“Out to Lunch was a major influence early on. Dolphy’s ideas about time and form and harmony and melody, all these elements of music, stretched but still discernible, that’s always attracted me, as well his musical spirit in general…As for Yusef Lateef, who I had the good fortune to work with in Adam Rudolph’s large ensemble about ten years ago, I first fell in love with Prayer to the East then Live at Pep’s – earlier Yusef records from the 50s/60s rather than later periods…The way Yusef welcomed not just orchestral instruments but also non-western instruments into a jazz group influenced me tremendously….As far as other influences, literature is an ongoing source of inspiration, not just for song titles, but also for ideas of narrative – linear and otherwise – that I try to bring to the music. The idea of non-programmatic narrative, abstract narrative, I find very appealing. And traditional music and dance of the world all influence how I want my music to be received – in its spirit, its rawness, its honesty…Not to be vainglorious, but the music I make is an offering…My hope is that this music touches people and makes them feel.”
“As to the overall rhythmic feel, there are lots of mixed meters, and there are spaces for a soloist or the group or a subset of the group to break free of the composed materials….Rhythmic counterpoint is a big part of all the writing I do, no matter how small the group…No matter how non-overt it may end up sounding, I’m always exploring the African concept of ostinato – meaning non-symmetrical repeating patterns rather than symmetrical rhythms….A clave that is of African and African Diasporic lineage has different weights, a call side to the rhythm and a response side. That has always attracted me, so a lot of these pieces have these kinds of vamps. Having said that, vamps are great things to break up and expand on. When you have someone like Mark Dresser playing the bass you want to encourage all these incredible variations and new directions that he’ll take vamps in – harmonically, melodically, rhythmically, texturally, all of the above. And that sort of sense of a multi-dimensional groove morphing at all times is what off kilter means, and refers to the bass lines too.”
Harris Eisenstadt, drums
Nicole Mitchell, flute
Sara Schoenbeck, bassoon
Mark Dresser, contrabass
Tracklist
Please note that the below previews are loaded as 44.1 kHz / 16 bit.Total time: 00:47:13
Additional information
| Label | |
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| SKU | PWSGL16022 |
| Qualities | DSD 512 fs, DSD 256 fs, DSD 128 fs, DSD 64 fs, DXD 24 Bit, WAV 88.2 kHz, FLAC 96 kHz |
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| Release Date | April 22, 2025 |
Press reviews
Georgia Straight
“Eisenstadt’s ballad “Sandy” bears at least a passing resemblance to the pioneering chamber jazz of Gerry Mulligan’s 1950s band with Chet Baker, while elsewhere there are echoes of the more radical pianoless quartets led by Ornette Coleman in the 1960s and Anthony Braxton in the 1970s. Mostly, though, Golden State sounds fresh, intellectually seductive, and very much like itself…”
JazzWord
“Chamber-jazz has gotten a bad rap over the years since it’s usually associated with bland programs that replace jazz’s inventive muscularity with soothing textures. In contrast Eisenstadt’s sophisticated themes ignore hierarchal roles to showcase unexpected instrumental blends, matching the rigor of so-called classical music with the freedom of improvisation….At the same time as Eisenstadt’s individualized compositions allow the reedists to expose the improvisatory heart of their often stolid instruments, they also showcase Dresser’s multifaceted talents. Unparalleled throughout as a pulse-maker, his arco facility is such that on “Sandy” his lyrical strokes could come from a viola-da-gamba, purposely extending the joyous baroque-like shadings that parallel what flute and bassoon lines already bring to the piece. Always sympathetically constructive in his playing, the drummer propels these tracks without loudness or forcing a beat.”
All About Jazz
“He’s emerged as an important voice within progressive jazz circles while gathering the crème de la crème of artists to help support his visions….It’s a fluid endeavor, but tightly structured as contrabass luminary Mark Dresser tightly coordinates the rhythmic component with Eisenstadt but also harmonizes with the soloists, establishing polytonal contrasts. Interestingly enough, the flute and bassoon combo often spark a hybrid emotive sensibility residing somewhere between joy and lament….Golden State is an album that discloses newfound surprises on additional listens. Nevertheless, Eisenstadt’s prolific compositional prowess continues to yield significant rewards. His flourishing discography expands into a broader realm with the advent of this first-class musical statement.”
Point of Departure
“Spacious, but dominated by off-kilter rhythms and thorny contours, these urbane chamber works occasionally evoke Braxton’s influence – unsurprisingly, since all but the leader have worked with him at one time or another. Nonetheless, Eisenstadt’s approach is far more groove-oriented; he maintains a compelling sense of forward momentum through cyclical pattern variation, avoiding standardized time signatures altogether. Dresser’s oblique bass figures subsequently interlock with these irregular but accessible ostinatos, spurring the winds on in turn. The ensemble executes these labyrinthine compositions with breathtaking dexterity, whether negotiating the abstract funk that underpins “What Is a Straw Horse, Anyways?” or the fragmented swing of “Especially Preposterous Assertions.” Revealing an all-encompassing aesthetic, the wistful ballad “Sandy” showcases the unit’s penchant for unabashed lyricism, as Schoenbeck, Mitchell and Dresser ply bittersweet motifs from a pastoral theme. Conveying a more forceful approach, engaging tunes like “Dogmatic in Any Case” and “Unless All the Evidence is In” offer striking demonstrations of the members’ quicksilver virtuosity and masterful integration of extended techniques, including ghostly woodwind overtones, rancorous double-reed multiphonics, stratified string harmonics and kaleidoscopic percussion interjections.The foursome’s rapport borders on the clairvoyant, with Eisenstadt and Dresser’s modulating interplay providing an elastic foundation for the frontline’s probing extrapolations. Schoenbeck’s rigorously defined contours and Mitchell’s unfettered flights alternate between individual ruminations and dual improvisations; the latter often executed in loose harmony or tight counterpoint. Greater than the sum of its parts, Golden State is a singularly captivating effort from Eisenstadt and company, verifying the neo-classical post-war experiments of the Third Stream movement and the pan-stylistic hybrids of the loft jazz era as enduring sources of inspiration for creative improvising musicians.”
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