Thomas Morgan

Jan 18 2020

Best of 2019 #68: Dan Weiss Trio Plus 1 – “Utica Box”

 

Precise like origami, swift as a knife fight, and cryptic as midnight: These are the qualities that Dan Weiss unites on his excellent 2019 recording Utica Box.  Melodies are unleashed in a vortex, where sometimes they spend the entire duration of a piece in an endless cycle, and other times they break free, shards spraying in all directions.  There’s a gravity to this music, a seriousness, the sense of eyes fixed to a spot on the horizon, and that singular focus is a form of momentum that carries this album briskly along no matter how fragmented it may become, keeping everything cohesive, and inducing fluid motion where conditions might otherwise become rudderless.  Utica Box also serves as a reminder that the compelling nature of his music isn’t just tied to his outstanding large ensemble projects.

Your album personnel:  Dan Weiss (drums), Jacob Sacks (piano), Thomas Morgan (bass), and Eivind Opsvik (bass).

Released on Sunnyside Records.

Music from New York City.

Listen | Read more | Available at:  Amazon – Bandcamp

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Jan 13 2019

Best of 2018 #21: Jakob Bro – “Bay of Rainbows”

 

Jakob Bro‘s melodic perspective is nothing less than stunning, and it’s remarkable how he keeps finding new and inspired ways of presenting it.  This live trio session with drummer Joey Baron and bassist Thomas Morgan is just the latest example of Bro’s limitless ability to craft beauty of out thin air.  It’s been my personal preference when the guitarist works with a quartet or larger ensemble, but I could listen to this trio session every day for the rest of my life, and the first thing out of my mouth upon arriving in heaven would be, hey, send me back down, I need to go listen to Bay of Rainbows again.

Read more on Bird is the Worm.

Music from Copenhagen, Denmark.

Released on ECM Records.

Available at:  Amazon

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