Jazz tenor-man par excellence' solo excursion for multi-reeds (tenor, soprano & baritone sax; alto, soprano & bass clarinet.) Stone's music is urgent and relentless. A cycle of highly organized spontaneous compositions deeply rooted in both jazz and free music improvisational traditions.
These 14 pieces document a series of instances in the journey of becoming. One person's renditions at the crossroads of the particular: this time, this place, this breath.... While rumors of a jazz chord are occasionally heard, these compositions exist primarily in a realm of their own delineation. And have no doubts about the use of the word "composition" when applied to improvisation. Dave Stone's inventions, while spontaneous, are highly organized and not only self-consistent, but emotionally and musically "logical" and complete (non-fragmentary). About this series of improvs, the musician tells us:
"This music is about nature: a walk in the woods with all of one's senses open to every detail. The wind blows in the trees and the grass, birds sing in the distance, thousands of insects and small animals go about their business. Now night is falling. The light fades from the sky, the air cools, and one feels enmeshed in the mutual awareness of all existence."
Dave Stone holds a degree in Jazz Performance from Webster University where he studied saxophone with Paul DeMarinis. After graduating, Stone worked with unsung home-town jazz greats, drummer Joe Charles and tenor-man Jimmy Sherrod. In 1996 he formed the award winning Dave Stone Trio which in its twenty year history has become a fixture on the St. Louis Jazz Scene. Stone joined veteran reed-man Jerry Green for several years early in the millennium fronting for the St.Louis Jazz X-Tet. More recently he can be heard playing tenor at the Wednesday Night Kranzberg Jazz Sessions run by bassist Bob DeBoo, a special performance workshop open to younger (under 21) players. As a working jazz musician, tenor and soprano saxophones are his instruments of choice but when not playing jazz he is a relentless free improviser often heard on baritone sax and soprano, alto and bass clarinet as well. Over the last fifteen years he has a history of performance with guitarist/electronic musician Chris Smentkowski's Brain Transplant, Jay Zelenka's Free Jazz Posse, and his owngroup, The Dave Stone Ensemble. In addition to solo shows he appears somewhat regularly in duos and trios with a variety of musicians and sound artists including Kevin Harris, Nathan Cook, and Jeremy Kannapell to name a few. Over the years Stone has performed on occasion with such notables as Milo Fine, Ken Vandermark & Jeb Bishjop and more recently Chris Corsano, Daren Gray, Evan Parker and Peter Evans. In 2015 he joined Andreotti and Mills forming the Perihelion Trio. Stone characterizes improvised music and particularly free improv as "the music with the most opportunity for achieving a completely intuitive approach...this is what I'm going for in my playing".
Born in 1971, Dave Stone grew up as a multi instrumentalist but as an improviser has specialized in reeds, sharing experiences with several central figures of the St. Louis jazz scene (all of them quite mysterious to the author, who doesn't miss a chance to prove his enduring lack of knowledge despite four abundant decades of swallowed recordings). In the fourteen episodes of Solo (2008) the protagonist showcases irrefutable talent and innate musicality through an array of saxophones and clarinets, occasionally naming the pieces with incomprehensible words ("Dundtor", "Ackakaplakakpla", "Belelelell") that I instantly fell in love with. If you manage to last the whole of the album's duration – not easy for a ham-fisted listener at over 68 minutes – the repayment comes under the shape of serious virtuosity characterized by legitimate intelligence. Stone chooses the right technique to explore every time, knows the value of silence and space between clean notes, convulsive spurts and unkind upper partials, unafraid of showing that he can play the damn instruments, not hiding behind pensive postures and false humility (the latter "qualities" always useful for getting profiles on major magazines). In some of the improvisations we were tempted to associate the playing to certain pages from Anthony Braxton's book, but this may just be a silly flight of the imagination. The core of the matter is that this is great self-propelling music requiring patience and attention, exposing the artistic sheen of a man who wants people to really understand what he means, translating intentions into a rewarding physicality distinguished by a near-flawless command of the instrumental dynamics.
--Massimo Ricci, Temporary Fault, 28 Aug 2010
credits
released January 1, 2008
Recorded June 29, July 18, August 23, 1998
Recording and Mix: Jay Zelenka
Design: Tony Patti
Produced by Jay Zelenka/Freedonia Music
Freedonia Music was born in 2006 to promote Creative Improvised Music.
Offering a
catalog of archival performances and contemporary recordings of New Music from the heart of the heartlands. Music to wake up your ears!
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