UnderWeatherKitten

I was active as a free jazz saxophonist throughout the 80's and 90's but at some point, I grew weary of some of the trapping of the genre - which seemed, more and more, to be about playing as loud and as frantic as possible. When Jason Levis called me for the first UnderWeatherKitten session, i imagined that was the kind of thing we would get into, but the thing about this band that is so satisfying for me, is that while we do indeed get the energy up to the boiling point, the listening is deep and the interplay is fierce - there's no excess, there's no bluster for the sake of making noise - instead, there are carefully sculpted sections where each player is allowed to lead the group as a composer in real time - and the sense is you get in and make your point and you get out so someone else can posit their thoughts and feelings. In short, it was clear that we all felt that somewhere along the way, free jazz abandoned brevity and concise statements in favor of long winded sermons. None of the players in this quartet seems interested in maintaining those traditions.

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