Personnel History
Drop Trio started in 2002 when keyboardist Ian Varley, who had just moved to Houston, answered a classified ad on JazzHouston.com posted by drummer Nuje Blattel "seeking keyboardist for jazz/funk trio". They played together, and wrote 2 songs immediately. Blattel then contacted his friend, bassist Nino Batista, and asked him to jam with them the next time they got together. Batista learned the 2 songs they had written from a rough recording from their session, and subsequently jammed, then joined, Blattel and Varley to form Drop Trio in the fall of 2002. The band immediately recorded a 6 track demo called Little Dipper at Batista's home in late 2002, and then their first - and critically heralded - album Big Dipper at the renowned SugarHill Recording Studios in Houston only a few months later. By mid 2003, the tour schedule was too much for Batista to keep up with (his wife was to give birth to their first child in April of that year) and he stepped down as bassist.
Following Batista's departure, Varley and Blattel called on friend and acclaimed Houston guitarist Marc Reczek to join the band on bass.
Reczek soon found the tour schedule grueling, which was compounded by the tour schedule of his own band, Little Brother Project. He too left the band in late 2003. Almost immediately, Batista rejoined the trio on bass, and continued with touring and ultimately recording Drop Trio's 2nd album with Varley and Blattel, the entirely improvised and experimental studio session known as Leap, on Feb. 29, 2004 once again at Sugarhill.
By late 2004, Batista opted to leave the band again, this time for good. The schedule was again too much to cope with, especially being a new father. He parted ways with Varley and Blattel, who then went on yet another search for a bassist. Their search led them to Patrick Flanagan from Houston. Flanagan had been playing professionally in jazz and rock bands since his early teens, gaining notoriety in North Texas as an experimental virtuoso in several bands (Fort Worth's Spiritual Hum). Soon after Batista's departure, Flanagan jammed with Drop Trio on several occasions, each time yielding more and more amazing results. Almost immediately, Flanagan joined them on the road, and it was during this time that the band grew immensely both as artists and a well-respected progressive jazz trio from Houston.
Flanagan's first official recording session with the band was to record Cézanne, the 3rd installment in the Drop Trio discography. The album was recorded live at Houston jazz venue of the same name. The album has been repeatedly heralded by many music critics and fans, and was a complete and total departure from the previous album Leap (which itself was a departure from the first album Big Dipper). This exploratory musical sense is the hallmark of Drop Trio's sound.
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