Matt Moran

Since their founding in the late 1990s, The Claudia Quintet has walked a unique path in contemporary jazz. Unlike most jazz ensembles where the particular musicians may come and go, drummer, composer and leader John Hollenbeck always wanted Claudia to be a 'band' with a sound not only determined by the compositions and the instrumentation, but with the actual players who perform the music.

The Daniel Levin Quartet has already shown on prior recordings that a change of conventional instrumentation in a jazz combo is enough to explore an entirely different world of musical gesture, timbre, and expression. In the case of this latest release, Levin dispenses with his own convention of using song structures as the basis for improvisation.

Daniel Levin formed his quartet in 2002. The first gig was at CBGB's in New York City and over the past 8 years, the band has covered a lot of musical territory.

The humorously titled Royal Toast is the fifth album from the Claudia Quintet, percussionist and composer John Hollenbeck's longstanding five-piece that is—in the eternal words of Duke Ellington—a band "beyond category." Eradicating the tenuous boundary lines between idioms, Hollenbeck and company draw on ethnic traditions, free jazz, contemporary composition and progressive rock in their multifac

Music may be an abstract art, meaning, as Stravinsky used to say, “nothing more than its own sounds”, but when it's presented with a title like "Organic Modernism", we have some food for thought.

By this time we have all learned to expect everything from trumpeter Nate Wooley, from post-bop heritage to the most abstract improvisation. This CD adds something more to what you already know about this extraordinary musician. Not because it mixes his diferent interests in one project – although it does –, but because he keeps things going forward, never repeating himself.