muzycy:
Dan Capecchi: drums
Matt Engle: bass
Bryan Rogers: tenor saxophone
Dan Scofield: alto saxophone
Editor's info:
What’s likely to strike you first about Shot × Shot’s debut CD is Dan Scofield and Bryan Rogers’s twin saxophone keening. The Philadelphia-based quartet’s signature sound, it’s going to remind some listeners of Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh, and others of Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders—let’s split the difference and say it’s like Konitz and Marsh in a more heated setting. This is music in which foreground and background are constantly shifting: the ear is drawn to the two horns, because that’s the way we’re used to listening to jazz, but Matt Engle’s bass and Dan Capecchi’s drums are often out front, and their ongoing dialogue is as vigorous and loose-limbed as Scofield and Rogers’s. So along with Coltrane and the Tristanoites, listeners might also be reminded of Ron Carter and Tony Williams with Miles, and even more so of Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell with Ornette Coleman (as Capecchi points out, “we originally bonded over our mutual love of Ornette Coleman’s music” as students in Philadelphia at the University of the Arts).
All well and good—these are enduring influences and convenient points of reference in listening to Shot × Shot. But it’s good to remember three of the band’s members are still in their early twenties (Capecchi is the old man of the group at 26). These young musicians have also been keeping tabs on recent developments. Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Tim Berne, and John Zorn are also in the mix, along with Brian Eno, Sly Stone, gamelan, and film (the band’s name is a conscious film reference).” This recording makes it clear that the members of Shot × Shot haven’t been passive receptors for these diverse influences. Indeed, it’s as if they’ve found the common thread between them, starting with Tristano and continuing up to the present—an emphasis on improvisation, rather than s....... more