DUO with scott amendola
Scott Amendola - drums, electronics
Phillip Greenlief - alto and tenor saxophones, Bb clarinet
HISTORY
Scott Amendola and Phillip Greenlief celebrate 30 years of collaboration with the release of STAY WITH IT on clean feed records. They began playing together when Greenlief moved back to the SF Bay Area in 1993. They experimented with a variety of approaches, but soon dedicated their work in the tradition of free improvisation for drums and saxophone. Their first release on 9 Winds Records, COLLECT MY THOUGHTS (1995), garnered international acclaim and offered the push they needed to begin touring and deepening their musical relationship. 30 years later, the sound of the duo has changed. Greenlief's sound palette has expanded to create a theater of the unexpected, and Amendola has integrated live electronics; the duo now moves easily between free jazz and electro-acoustic improvisation traditions with a fierce dedication to the moment that overrides allegiance to genre aesthetics.
AMENDOLA BIO
“Amendola’s music is consistently engaging, both emotionally and intellectually, the product of a fertile and inventive musical imagination.” The Los Angeles Times
“Amendola has complete mastery of every piece of his drumset and the ability to create a plethora of sounds using sticks, brushes, mallets, and even his hands.” Steven Raphael, Modern Drummer
“If Scott Amendola didn't exist, the San Francisco music scene would have to invent him.” Derk Richardson, San Francisco Bay Guardian
“...drummer/signal-treater Scott Amendola is both a tyrant of heavy rhythm and an electric-haired antenna for outworldly messages (not a standard combination).” Greg Burk, LA Weekly
For Scott Amendola, the drum kit isn’t so much an instrument as a musical portal. An ambitious composer, savvy bandleader and capaciously creative foil for some of the world’s most inventive musicians, Amendola applies his rhythmic virtuosity to a vast array of settings. His musical associates include guitarists, Nels Cline, Jeff Parker, Charlie Hunter, Hammond B-3 organist Wil Blades, violinists Regina Carter and Jenny Scheinman, clarinetist Ben Goldberg, and players who have forged a singular path within and beyond the realm of jazz.
NEW! from clean feed records - STAY WITH IT
READ Bill Meyer's review in DUSTED magazine
collect my thoughts (1995)
CDs OUT OF PRINT
to purchase digital download
go to STORE
Advance praise from Spencer Grady ...
"One of the most engaging team-ups in exploratory jazz celebrates 30 years of simpatico collaboration and creativity with the release of Stay With It, their first outing on the Clean Feed imprint. It finds Phillip Greenlief and Scott Amendola developing the febrile dialogues mapped out on their deliciously bristling 1995 debut, Collect My Thoughts, an absorbing set that saw the pair garner considerable
international plaudits, inspiring them to further cultivate their
connection through regular touring expeditions. Three decades on, Greenlief and Amendola remain fully dedicated to
their punchy, snaking exchanges, with hyper-dynamic tracks such as ‘Morpheteria’ and ‘Eloquent Turbulence’ building on the bountiful foundations of previous works, drums and horns locked in gloriously kinetic convulsions. But Stay With It also signals an evolution, borne of shared insight and artistic understanding, the duo inaugurating “a theatre of the unexpected”, as they mine acutely textural passages
augmented by Amendola’s implementation of live electronics. The granular, parping abstractions of ‘Microfiche’ recall peak Supersilent in meditative cyborg mode, while ‘Farfalle en Mare’’s subtle amalgams of distorted sax exhaust and mutant cymbal-sourced static underline the duo’s commitment to exploring intriguing alien interzones nestled between free jazz and electro-acoustic espionage.
While their distinguished careers have seen them share stage and studio with eminent artists ranging from Alice Coltrane, Susan Alcorn and Nels Cline to Mike Patton, Manuel Mota and John Zorn, it is often within this special tandem formation, so adroitly captured on Stay With It, where Greenlief and Amendola conjure their most personal and profound creations."
recording session - 2018 @the shinebox
