Present
In early 2009 it was announced that founding members Brian Haas and Reed Mathis would be amicably parting ways, and that Mathis would no longer be involved with JFJO. Negative rumors about the "split" have circulated in the media, but both Haas and Mathis have made an effort to clarify that the decision was mutual. In a March 2009 interview, Brian Haas explained it this way:
| “ | "It's real simple stuff‚ obvious stuff. Reed and I didn't have any drama. We were just tired of being around each other and tired of playing with each other. Zero drama and zero discussions. He and I both had the same idea on the same day—he wasn't fired and he didn't leave. It was a mutual thing that we communicated to each other on the same day‚ and we never looked back." | ” |
The lineup of Haas/Raymer/Hayes/Combs made its debut at the NYC Winter Jazz Festival on January 10, 2009 to a packed house at Kenny's Castaways in New York City.
In early 2009, Jacob Fred formed their own record label, named Kinnara Records. The name Kinnara was chosen due to the members' strong identification with Buddhist and Hindu ideals. The half-bird, half-woman goddess Kinnara is representative of beauty, grace and accomplishment, and translates to "heavenly music" in Sanskrit.
On July 17, 2009, JFJO announced a cluster of seven nights in which they would be opening for Phish bassist Mike Gordon. The tour is set to run through venues in the Midwest, New England, and Ontario.
Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey were winners of the 8th annual Independent Music Awards Vox Pop vote for best New Age Album Lil' Tae Rides Again.
The first half of 2010 found JFJO touring both the West & East Coasts here in the States, as well as the entire month of March in Europe. In April the band announced that they were parting ways with bassist Matt Hayes and would be bringing on Kansas City resident Jeff Harshbarger as their new double bassist. Harshbarger made his JFJO premier on April 17 with two consecutive performances for Record Store Day and the release of the 7" vinyl single "The Sensation of Seeing Light".
After years of labor, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey’s reinterpretations of Beethoven’s 3rd & 6th Symphonies premiered in June 2010 as a project entitled ‘Ludwig’. The project, which rearranged Beethoven’s 3rd and 6th symphonies, was premiered alongside a 50 piece orchestra on June 12th as a headline performance at the OK Mozart Festival. Downbeat is calling ‘Ludwig’ “a tour de force of jazz melded with classical.” JFJO’s reinterpretations channel the spirits of not only Beethoven & Karajan but Led Zeppelin & Radiohead as well. Haas was thrilled to be able to return to his classical roots and describes the project as “Ellington’s Far East Suite meets the Flaming Lips,” complete with intricate arrangements, in-the-moment improvisations, and big rock breakdowns.
The band also released their 20th album, Stay Gold, as CD & double vinyl on June 22. In support of the release the band toured with the new quartet lineup in June including dates at the Rochester International Jazz Festival and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. The band has further plans for touring in September and October 2010 stretching from New Orleans to Louisville to Seattle to LA.
In early 2011, the group recorded "The Race Riot Suite", about the Tulsa race riot of 1921, at Tulsa's Church Studio.
The bands 21st album, The Race Riot Suite, was released on August 30, 2011. The project found the band reaching into the dark annals of its hometown’s history. Written, arranged and orchestrated by Chris Combs, the album is a long-form conceptual piece that tells the devastating story of the 1921 Tulsa race riot-- a real estate-driven ethnocide occurring under the guise of citizen-dispensed justice. The oil-elite, civic government and local press colluded to take advantage of a racially tense climate in Jim Crow-era Oklahoma, resulting in the death of hundreds of black Tulsans and the destruction of an entire city district.
“The adventurous jazz band’s latest project pays tribute to Tulsa’s Greenwood community, destroyed in a 1921 race riot, while evoking the creative output of 1920s Oklahoma…the score captures the energy of Greenwood’s fervent churchgoers and the rollicking territory dance bands that crisscrossed the Southwest.” says the Los Angeles Times.
In addition to the permanent line-up of Combs (lap steel), Brian Haas (piano), Josh Raymer (drums) and Jeff Harshbarger (bass), the quartet enlisted the assistance of world class horn players Jeff Coffin (Bela Fleck, Dave Matthews Band), Steven Bernstein (Sex Mob, Levon Helm), Peter Apfelbaum (Hieroglyphics, Don Cherry), Mark Southerland (Snuff Jazz) and Matt Leland (a founding JFJO member). The Boston Globe says the Suite is “a beautifully orchestrated, melodically rich piece that celebrates Greenwood as much as it laments the wanton violence that destroyed the neighborhood”.
In Fall of 2012 The Race Riot Suite reached #1 on the CMJ Jazz chart. The North American album release tour included two nights at the Jazz Standard in NYC, the Boom Boom Room in San Francisco, the University of California San Diego, as well as a performances at Montreal Jazz Festival, High Sierra Music Festival, & the Bear Creek Music Festival. Time Out New York says that “…the 12-part suite pinballs between majestic melodies, free improv and ragged New Orleans rhythms, sometimes all within the same song…expect a heavy dose of history, but an even heavier dose of forward-looking, down-home jazz.”
Read more about this topic: Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, 2009
Famous quotes containing the word present:
“I am surprised you shd. say fancy and aesthetic tastes have led me to my present state of mind: these wd. be better satisfied in the Church of England, for bad taste is always meeting one in the accessories of Catholicism.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“The reverence for the deeds of our ancestors is a treacherous sentiment. Their merit was not to reverence the old, but to honor the present moment; and we falsely make them excuses of the very habit which they hated and defied.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will sing it; the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)