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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
handmade CDr in a cardboard jacket, plus an insert with liner notes by Tom Weeks, info, etc. Fun color assortment - let us choose for you, or specify when checking out!
Includes unlimited streaming of Soprano Saxophone Improvisations
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
I met Kevin Murray in the Bay Area (our shared homeland) a few years before he moved to New York. At that time, he was a precociously talented drummer for his young age, possessing remarkable technical acumen, unflagging energy, and, most impressively, the intuition and feel for “freely improvised” music of a man many years his senior. Since moving to the Big Apple, Kevin has, in an almost disconcertingly short amount of time, expanded his virtuosity to include a creative practice on the soprano saxophone. Not only does he play with the confidence and sound fundamentals of a master of the instrument, he shows remarkable technical creativity in owning many of the most difficult “extended techniques” of the saxophone, as well as creating some new ones. The two live recordings presented here are evidence of a truly original saxophonist with a unique voice. There are shades of Evan Parker’s mastery of articulation and nuanced multiphonics, as well as Zorn’s rapid-fire technical grab-bag approach to solo saxophone performance, but Kevin’s style is unmistakably his own. While the music is free-flowing, it is highly engaging due to Kevin’s dogged pursuit of concrete ideas, following threads to their logical conclusion while running them through his prismatic technical gauntlet. The music here is certainly deserving of several focused listening sessions, and undoubtedly shows promise of much more to come from Kevin Murray, who is rapidly, and repeatedly, proving himself to be one of the finest improvising musicians of our time.
-Tom Weeks, Oakland, CA, May 2023
credits
released June 7, 2023
Kevin Murray, soprano sax
Recorded live at Sunview Luncheonette 3/3/23 & Record Shop 3/29/23 on a Tascam
Mastered by Nate Sherman
ON TOUR JUNE '23:
6/10 - Brooklyn, NY @ House Show (DM)
6/15 - Boston, MA @ Find Out Series
6/16 - Providence, RI @ The Ridge
6/17 - Greenfield, MA @ John Doe, Jr.
6/20 - Brooklyn, NY @ Record Shop
6/22 - Washington, DC @ Rhizome
6/24 2pm - Willimantic, CT @ Willimantic Records
6/24 7pm - New Haven, CT @ Neverending Books
6/25 - Philadelphia, PA @ Century
supported by 4 fans who also own “Soprano Saxophone Improvisations”
Total mastery of patience, time, and drama create a constantly engaging journey that never gets tiresome or same-y: in fact the harder you listen the better it gets! Somehow Sorey et al. find a way to combine the deep listening and spontaneous interaction of the best jazz with the sense of every tone and sound being worth a universe of listening, which could be equally from Cage and Feldman or the accompaniment to an ancient ritual.
The recording/engineering is absolutely perfect as well. Giles