Pianist Dana Saul, a composer-improviser who has studied both jazz and 20th century classical music, presents us here with his debut disc as a leader. As quoted from the press release accompanying this set, Saul “rejected most of my initial notions of what I wanted to do with the group and honed in on a limited set of musical obsessions,” rejecting traditional jazz scoring for a sextet and what the release calls “an obligatory variety of mood and tempos, embracing instead contrapuntal texture over individual melodies as well as long periods of defined harmonic spaces in place of harmonically saturated progressions.”
Translated into non-geek English, what this means is that Saul has written “jazz” music that follows the patterns of such avant-garde classical composers as György Ligeti more than a standard set of changes, no matter how innovative those changes are, in others’ work.
from artmusiclounge.wordpress.com