On most Thursdays at Brooklyn Bowl, ?uestlove spins the night away during sessions billed as Bowl Train which means a more compressed evening than usual for the concert that leads
Fiona Apple will hit the road for a six-date tour next month.
With its fifth release, Garage a Trois has crafted an album destined to go down as one of the best instrumental releases of the last couple decades. That may sound a tad hyperbolic, but Always Be Happy but Stay Evil showcases the extraordinary range of four musicians at the top of their respective games.
Supporting their most recent effort Power Patriot that came out in late 2009 on the stellar Royal Potato Family label, Garage A Trois made no reservations about being playing the part of entertainers. With two one hour sets, the quartet put whimsicality and energy first, while placing compositional perfection somewhere down the priority line, but it didn’t matter – this is a live band and these four guys toss any preconceived jazz notions by way of prog and rock leanings.
With Power Patriot, the realigned Garage a Trois attempt to answer the musical question: "Is there life after Charlie Hunter?" The seven-string samurai has been part of this band's lineup since its inception a decade ago and his replacement by Marco Benevento fundamentally alters the sound of the quartet. This music is definitely less dependent on groove though it carries just as much visceral impact (and in your face, not through insinuation).
Garage a Trois is a band which at first could be thought of as an all-star band of heavy hitters, but that would be a severe understatement. The band, which started as a trio consisting of saxophonist Skerik, guitar virtuoso Charlie Hunter, and drummer Stanton Moore, later adding vibraphonist Mike Dillon, has grown into a tightly structured, well oiled funk beast. Hunter is no longer part of the group, in that slot is one of the most in demand keyboard players around, Marco Benevento, who permanently joined the group in 2007.
Skerik's latest album Husky, is a live recording featuring his Syncopated Taint Septet, a mix known as a “punk-jazz version of the Thelonius Monk Octet. ” For the musician known as Skerik, the word "collaboration" never grows old.
As a drummer, composer and bandleader for the past 27 years, Bobby Previte has been a perpetual music machine. With Coalition of the Willing, Previte is joined by Marco Benevento, Charlie Hunter, Skerik and Stanton Moore proving there are always inventive ways to serach for “it.”
While their previous self-titled record on ropeadope seemed more haphazard in a coming-together-at-the-last-minute sort of way, Husky has a more robust polish to it.
When Warren Haynes was asked to play as the house band for Last Call With Carson Daly he could have easily justassembled his band Gov
