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Interview Music

by Ian Carey Quintet+1

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jakesmolowe
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jakesmolowe Stunning piece of work, beautifully recorded. The level of communication between the musicians is riveting, the individual performances are strong all around, and Carey displays a variety of compositional forms throughout. I love how it shifts effortlessly from frenzied activity to contemplative musings. I love part III about 6 1/2 minutes in, where everything dies down to nothing and Carey's trumpet comes in and starts layering on itself. It's gorgeous and really lifts me up. Favorite track: Interview Music: III.
therubestrikesout
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therubestrikesout high energy jazz that remains accessible throughout- I've spent the past few years listening to jazz in backwards chronological order- so I'm glad now to find such good reasons to start looking for contemporary artists as well.
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Big Friday 07:04

about

Interview Music is a 45-minute, four-movement adventure and Bay Area trumpeter and composer Ian Carey’s longest composition to date. It is a vehicle both for his intricate writing and the improvisational chops of his group, the Ian Carey Quintet+1, last heard on 2013’s acclaimed album Roads & Codes (Kabocha Records), which received praise from DownBeat and NPR, and appeared on many critics’ best of 2013 lists.

The title of “Interview Music” refers to a recent discussion in the jazz world over the increasing percentage of new music being funded through non-profit commissions and grants, and whether that system favors what the late pianist Mulgrew Miller called “interview music”—high-concept, programmatic works, often with subject matter like visual artists, literary figures, or social movements. “Everyone started to get the feeling,” says Carey, “that they’d never get a second look if their music wasn’t about Pablo Neruda or the grape boycott or the Fibonacci sequence or whatever.”

Carey has turned the tables on the argument by writing a new extended piece for his ensemble which specifically rejects that approach. Somewhat ironically, “Interview Music” is being funded by just such a grant (from InterMusic SF’s Musical Grant Program), but Carey noted when applying that he specifically did not want to go into the project with such a pre-existing concept. “Classical composers have created amazing works for centuries with no topics at all, other than the music itself—Symphony or String Quartet number whatever, ‘Octet for Winds,’ and so on. I feel like jazz composers think they need to use catchy concepts and topics to stand out, but shouldn’t the catchiest part be the music?” Carey adds that he never felt comfortable trying to decide what a piece should be about before writing it—paraphrasing Miles Davis’ famous “I’ll play it and tell you what it is later” quip, he says, “I just don’t work that way. I write first and figure out what it’s about after I hear it. If it’s about anything!” Happily, the grant committee agreed, and funded the piece’s composition and premiere performance.

The result is a challenging work which runs the gamut from intricate through-composed sections to raucous group improvisation, showcasing the chops Carey has developed over his past decade of writing for the ensemble. His goals as a composer—providing individually tailored solo contexts for each improviser, utilizing the dense counterpoint favored by his favorite composers, and moving beyond the melody-solos-melody roadmap of more traditional jazz writing—show up in surprising ways, including a passacaglia (a classical form built around a cycling melodic figure) and a movement in which the horns and rhythm section each spend most of the time in completely separate tempos (borrowing a trick from Carey’s idol Charles Ives), but the improvisational talents of the ensemble are never far from the forefront.

credits

released April 8, 2016

Jon Arkin, drums
Sheldon Brown, bass clarinet
Ian Carey, trumpet
Kasey Knudsen, alto saxophone
Fred Randolph, bass
Adam Shulman, piano

All compositions by Ian Carey, ©2015 SixAv Music, ASCAP.

Recorded April 18, 2015 at Fantasy Studios, Berkeley, CA. Engineered, mixed and mastered by Dan Feiszli, What’s For Lunch? Recording.

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Ian Carey Richmond, California

SF Bay Area-based trumpeter and composer. Projects include Ian Carey Quintet+1 and Wood Metal Plastic.

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