Artist: Julian Siegel

Date of Release: 10/11/2008

Catalogue no: SRCD26-2

Label: Basho

Price: £13.99

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Track Listing

DOUBLE CD

With Greg Cohen (double bass) and Joey Baron (drums.

This CD is the long awaited live sessions recorded at the Vortex in London in January 2007 during a sell-out tour of the UK, which proved hugely popular with both audiences and press. The trio originally came together as a result of a major commission from the Cheltenham International Jazz Festival in 2006, but has developed into a real meeting of musical minds who enjoy each other’s company. Siegel and the ace downtown New York rhythm section of Greg Cohen (double bass) and Joey Baron (drums) create real fireworks and provide a perfect setting for fresh improvisations and great dialogue between the musicians, who between them share an impressive CV. The album will be released on Basho Records on 9th November 2008 as Basho’s first double CD – “Live at the Vortex”. To celebrate the release, the trio will tour the UK again in January 2009. Thanks are due to Jazz Services who have generously funded the project and to the Vortex Jazz Club who will be hosting the band for two nights to celebrate the launch.
CD1
1 Atlantic 10.00
2 Wigsworld 9.20
3 Alfie 8.11
4 Stop Go Man 7.57
5 Night at the Opera 6.26
Total time 42.01
CD2 two
1 Incantation #1 10.18
2 M.A.B. 5.58
3 Haunted Waltz 13.13
4 Sandpit 11.38
5 One Mint Julep 11.04
Total time 52.20

Reviews

01/12/2008 Andy Robson, Jazzwise ****

This may be Basho’s first live and first double album but it only takes a bar or so to understand why they were keen to break those ducks with this special release. Siegel doesn’t always project as the most assertive of tenor men – The Partisans, or as a willing sideman has seen much of his best witty, delicate, intellectual (but never dry) work. But, in the esteemed company or Baron and Cohen (a shame Siegel’s not monikered Sacha ‘cos it could have been the Sacha Baron Cohen trio), Siegel, far from being overawed beside such US jazz royalty, blossoms and blooms.
Part of Siegel’s inspiration came from listening to the bass/drum duo with Lee Konitz on Some New Stuff, and there is something of Konitz’s lightness of touch, sense of space and Debussy-like impressionism in Siegel: all qualities a tenor’s not readily recognised for. What’s more, the band has been recorded to catch every buzz on the bass or key pad flap, giving us the sense we’re eavesdropping on the trio. Not that this is stiff necked, musos only, chamber stuff. ‘One Mint Julep’ swings and wallops as much as ‘Incantation No.1’ sighs and meditates, ‘Haunted Waltz’ is a mad Austrian tea dance car crashed into a free jam, Stop Go Man’ summons Mingus even as ‘Alfie’ evokes, er, Michael Caine. Overall this is 90 minutes of virtuosic music but carried through with a verve and sense of fun that seduces you back over and again for repeated listening. Siegel, the quiet man, has stepped up to the plate and delivered big time, jokes and all. Who needs Borat.

28/11/2008 Kenny Mathieson, The Scotsman 4 stars****

SAXOPHONIST Julian Siegel won the Best Instrumentalist category at the BBC UK Jazz Awards in 2007, and this two-CD set alongside with New York-based musicians Greg Cohen (bass) and Joey Baron (drums) will add further lustre to his reputation. Saxophone trio is a very exposed environment, but all three musicians respond to the challenges in exhilarating fashion.

Siegel is an inventive and unorthodox musical thinker, and the two Americans – well used to playing without the harmonic support of piano or guitar, not least in John Zorn's great Masada quartet – respond to the energy and serpentine melodic logic of his improvisations in equally imaginative fashion.

Eight tunes by Siegel and cover versions of Alfie and One Mint Julep are given extended and absorbing treatments, although both the writing and their freewheeling musical interplay may prove a little oblique and abstract for some tastes.

17/11/2008 The Telegraph

Can the austere sound of a piano-less jazz trio really hold our interest over a double album of 94 minutes? Yes, if the players are as brilliant and nimble-fingered as these. The chemistry between sax player and composer Julian Siegel, drummer Joey Baron and bass player Greg Cohen is almost uncanny.

14/11/2008 Al Brownlee, Manchester Evening News ****

Jazz as it should be – captured on the wing. Two nights at The Vortex are spread over two CDs. Clearly these were immortal events. Brit saxophonist Julian Siegel is in great form, insouciant and free, and the mid-Atlantic rhythm team of Joey Baron and Greg Cohen respond to every move. Odd that the music should be so fresh, when it’s so firmly cast in the Coleman/Dolphy School of Improv By Inner Logic, over half a century old now. Siegel is a player of unshowy virtuosity – he strips the music down to the melodic essence. His tone is dry and full voiced. The detail of the recording is vivid, and captures more than human ear could discern at the gig itself.

01/10/2008 Joe Lovano

"This Trio is full of Music and Magic and will capture you as it did me with repeated listening..Bravo !!!"