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MP3 Sean Jefferson - Dreamworks
11 MP3 Songs in this album (71:28) !
Related styles: Jazz: Contemporary Jazz, Jazz: Neo-Bop, Featuring Drums
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New York, NY—Visionary drummer/composer Sean Jefferson is proud to announce the September 20th release of Dreamworks, his sprawling new album on Wycliffe Gordon’s Bluesback Records. You may already know Sean from his full-time gig as the hard-grooving drummer in Grammy-nominated organ trio Paradigm Shift, but Dreamworks, Jefferson’s second album as a leader, announces his arrival in grand fashion. Consisting mostly of original compositions by Sean, Dreamworks captures him truly coming into his own as a composer. With Dreamworks, Jefferson was striving for nothing less than a modern-day jazz masterpiece, one that listeners might return to again and again when they feel like going on a journey that carries them to a different place every time they press the play button. That’s exactly what listeners are in for with Jefferson’s serpentine rhythms, deep-set grooves, soaring melodies, and exhilarating blend of post-bop swing with classical elegance all executed with almost fearsome aplomb by a quartet that features some of the most exciting young players in jazz today: bassist Richie Goods, pianist Harold O’Neal and saxman Marcus Strickland – a group that Rochester’s City Newspaper said “very well could have been the greatest group in jazz.” on the night of its triumphant 2009 appearance at the Rochester International Jazz Festival. In spite of all its technical attributes, though, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more grooving, listenable jazz release from this year. Bluesback Records founder Wycliffe Gordon had this to say: “Bluesback Records was founded to present new original works that set the standard in composition and performance for tomorrow, and Sean has certainly answered the call with Dreamworks.” Indeed, Jefferson is hardly content to just keep time. Instead, like his predecessors who left a permanent mark on jazz, he seeks to advance the mindset of his instrument every time he sits down at the kit. And though he is rigorously trained in jazz, clasiscal, and other styles, Sean is perpetually searching for deeper musical knowledge and understanding. He’s also an engaging, entertaining speaker with profound insight on a multitude of subjects.
L I N E R N O T E S
And away we go... with the deceptively approachable Harold O’Neil piano figure that opens this album, we hurl headlong into the gleaming expanse of drummer/composer Sean Jefferson’s vision, a vision poised to leave its imprint on the face of jazz for a long time to come. When he first conceived of this album, Jefferson was drawn not only to the intangible fabric of dreams, but also to the submerged implications they carry for the things that happen to us when we’re awake. For something so basic to day-to-day life, we require little provocation to remember how mysterious our dreams truly are. But we usually stop there, shrugging and moving onto the next task where perhaps some greater truth calls to us if only we’d look further. How strange it is, for example, that the events in our dreams defy the seemingly fixed laws of nature yet somehow feel more fundamentally natural than the walking and talking and obedience to hard physics that we busy ourselves with from the moment we get out of bed. How strange that to be human means essentially to dwell in two contradictory states that run on parallel tracks, and stranger still that those states overlap in those precious fleeting seconds as we emerge from sleep. How revealing a metaphor that we sometimes refer to ourselves as “sleepwalking” when we know we’re not in sync with our innermost needs – even if our lives appear to be well in order. We must be aware, then, that our spirit begins to dim when we give too much credence to the world of concrete form, and that there’s something vital in the surreal, liquid reality on whose shores we find ourselves adrift every single night.
Jefferson knew there had to be a way to express all of this in music, because music is after all our most accessible bridge to places we can’t otherwise touch. Still, what a challenge to render in music the everyday sensations of sleeping, dreaming, and waking. To do so would require Jefferson to match the reach of his imagination with his grasp as a composer – and to assemble a band capable of executing his ideas. As this album makes clear, Jefferson outdoes himself, while the rest of the quartet – Marcus Strickland, Harold O’Neil, and Richie Goods – proves that it can not only play but be in multiple dimensions at once. Taking the stage together for the first time at the 2009 Rochester International Jazz Festival mere hours after seeing Jefferson’s charts, it’s a testament to the quartet’s chemistry that it was able to capture on tape the living, breathing (and, yes, dreamlike) magic Jefferson called for with virtually no time to rehearse. Fittingly, within the first few bars of opening number “Living This Dream,” Jefferson and and company fold conventional notions of time, dynamics, and harmony into new shapes. Not unlike cubist painters, each band member plays his parts in such a way that you can listen to them straight on and hear them from side angles at the same time. First and foremost, however, Jefferson and company lay down a mean groove. They also serve up the first of Dreamworks’ many instantly memorable hooks. Amidst all the progressive ambitions at play throughout the album, hummable passages beckon at various points along the way. For Jefferson, it was crucial that both band and listener be able to make this journey not just as musicians or listeners, but as explorers charting a course through the unknown – and perhaps even the unknowable.
Living This Dream
What happens when we reverse the significance we usually ascribe to “living” versus “dreaming”? What if what we’ve come to recognize as “real” is actually illusory? This piece, rest assured, contains no answers, only clues that lead to more questions, but here’s one: a Sean Jefferson trademark, rhythmic complexity and simplicity can trade places in the blink of an eye. At times, it’s obvious that all four instruments are playing in different meters. Other times, Jefferson messes with rhythm and meter more discreetly. The band gels in opposing meters as readily as it can pull apart when everyone’s playing in 3/4 or 4/4. Central to this rhythmic sleight of hand is Harold O’Neil’s piano part, which was inspired by one of Jefferson’s primary influences, Russell Ferrante of the Yellowjackets: “I really love flowing patterns like that,” says Jefferson, “because you can branch off in any direction you want, whether it’s melodic or rhythmic.” Though Richie Goods’ bass and Marcus Strickland’s sax parts are both slightly displaced over the main count, the overall effect is coherence. Seemingly conflicting patters work together – continuity and confusion become one and the same...
Eternal Light
Just as the listener is about to settle into the genteel swing that underscores Marcus Strickland’s saxophone line, the band suddenly unravels for a few moments of zero-gravity chaos before coming together again – without allowing even the slightest drop of the tune’s beauty to spill. In a broad sense, Jefferson sees “Eternal Light” as an analogy for the individual’s struggle with faith. “Things fall apart,” he says. “You’re going along, then you realize you’re off track. But it all comes back together of its own accord.” We may lose our way, but the light – whatever you may regard it to be – will always be there.
Round Midnight
A dense, crawling take on Monk that calls forth an image of the late piano icon in the empty after hours lounge of your deepest-sleep dreams. Here, the band demonstrates its exceptional powers of transformation: aiming several decades back in time, the quartet brings a surrealist edge to jazz tradition and creates a sonic space where, like a dream, one immediately senses that something is amiss but can’t tell whether it feels eerie or pleasant – or both.
Interlude / Dreamworks
Built entirely on percussion, “Interlude” foreshadows a later section of the album and sets the stage for the epic title-cut centerpiece. Beginning with a brooding bass figure from Richie Goods, “Dreamworks” showcases Jefferson’s distinct penchant for fusing classical with jazz. Here, Jefferson brings symphonic sprawl and Baroque dramatics to the breezy elegance of post-bop.
Half Past Twilight
As Jefferson is keen to point out, twilight actually occurs not once, but twice every day – first thing in the morning and again at dusk. The moods we associate with each, of course, contrast profoundly. Based around an abstraction of a traditional New Orleans 2nd-line rhythm, “Half Past Twilight” further illustrates Jefferson’s ongoing preoccupations with the fluid workings of time, and with the sequence of the day as a symbol for individual evolution. If one were to photograph the same purple shade of sky once before sunrise and once in the evening, it’s debatable whether the difference would be visible to the naked eye. But musically speaking, Jefferson’s group is capable of coloring similar or even identical motifs with diverging shades of meaning so that, as you listen, you’re not quite sure whether you’re arriving or departing, gearing up towards a climax or easing down, looking forward to the future or reminiscing about the past. Does the “half past” of the title denote day? Or night? The more you listen, the less you can be sure.
Tossing & Turning
Fidgety, cacophonous, disjointed, chaotic... the title says it all, and the music perfectly simulates the hot discomfort of either lying awake in bed, unable to sleep, or what the body does during fitful sleep, where like sleeping dogs we twitch chasing after imaginary rabbits. This piece features electric guitar courtesy of Paradigm Shift founder Mel Henderson.
Wake Me From This Nightmare
A strikingly pleasant piece of music, one has to dig to find the nightmarish elements. Henderson again appears, this time in an even more prominent capacity.
Sunrise
Daybreak – is it greeted by the dreamer with relief or sadness? As short-lived as the sunrise of its title, this piece succinctly announces that the dream is, in fact, over. (Or is it?) In a clean break from the album’s previous pieces, Strickland switches to clarinet here and, with a vaguely mournful tone, heralds the start of the day.
Awakening
Like the two preceeding pieces, “Awakening” contains shades of melancholy where one might expect celebration. The dreamer awakens, forever changed. Strickland, again on clarinet, in a sense describes everything – the modulated but diminishing promise of possibility – that awaits the dreamer who now lies awake. If we follow Jefferson’s use of the day as a metaphor for growth, then what transpired during sleep hasn’t necessarily made the day’s work any easier. Unsurprisingly, the tune ends on an indecisive note.
Dream Chaser
The continuation of “Interlude,” the album closes with this all-percussion piece played entirely by Jefferson. “Dream Chaser” plays like the busy intersection where Steve Reich-influenced patterns cross the earthy folk percussion of West African, Balinese gamelan, and other rhythmic systems that Jefferson has absorbed throughout his career. “It’s almost like running barefoot in the woods,” he offers. But, while there is certainly a refreshing, even childlike quality to the piece, Jefferson also wanted it to sound “unsettled” and wanted to actively avoid any sense of clear resolution: “I didn’t want it,” he says, “to sound like the dream has been found or anything.”
So where does that leave you exactly? Well, at the very least, transported. To where, though, only time (and repeated listens) can tell. But hopefully, after taking a ride with this highly empathic, soul-searching quartet, listeners might be more attuned to the things we see in the corner of our eye but don’t register because we haven’t been properly trained.
Perhaps, as the dreamworld seeps into view, sleepwalking isn’t such a bad thing after all.
S A B Y R E Y E S - K U L K A R N I
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