I just finished a full day of recording with two old friends, Damión Reid and Matt Brewer, at the Samurai Hotel recording studio in NYC. It was beautiful to see these guys bring my trio compositions to life and add the unexpected twists that made them unique to this group. I can’t thank them enough for playing this music as well as David Stoller who captured this performance in his beautiful studio. A big thank you to Nick Vayenas for coming out and capturing video of this date. I can’t wait to see how it all comes together.
This session was an impromptu decision I made, knowing I would be in NYC in a months time. Setting a deadline such as this really pushed me to I called these friends, booked the studio, wrote music, and worked around quite a few obstacles to see this through. I’ve learned so much from the experience and it has stoked a fire to do it again and go deeper into the music.
The connection with these musicians goes back over a decade when I met and played duos with Damión in Boston for hours at a time, day after day. I met Matt when we were roommates living in Harlem when he was still pretty new to NYC. He sounded so amazing then that you would have thought he had been in the city for ages.
Right now I'm getting ready to see Winter Jazz Fest in NYC before heading back south. It will be a special treat to see so many old friends that I haven’t had a chance to catch up with in years. More about that when I write again. Hope you all are having a great start to 2017!