From Abel Mireles's "Animo" (9/9/22) on Sunnyside Records.

A healthy relationship developed with a parent is essential to the well-being of a child. The effects of a warm word or a bit of advice can last a lifetime when it comes from someone you love. Saxophonist/composer Abel Mireles dedicates his new recording, Animo, to his father, an important influence and benefactor whose words the younger Mireles uses to inspire his music. 

Having grown up in Juarez, Mexico, Mireles and his family experienced life much differently than most of his collaborators. Mireles and his brothers were brought up in a musical household and were drawn to performing. Music was not provided in their schools, so they had to find after school programs to pursue their muse. This is where Mireles met teacher and saxophonist Fortunato Perez, who introduced Mireles to the sounds of jazz and Charlie Parker. 

Music became Mireles’s passion and, with his family’s help, he was able to continue his studies at the University of Texas El Paso, where he studied commercial music. Mireles remained in El Paso after graduating, becoming engrained in the local music scene and met his wife, vocalist Candice Reyes, on the bandstand. 

While Mireles was in El Paso, his father had retired from his factory job and had become a security guard for a day care center. One day, a drug trade related shooting occurred across from the day care. Mireles’s father witnessed the young shooters and was fired upon, getting hit in the leg. The injury eventually led to a bad turn in his health and, after a few scares, a heart attack took Mireles’s father in 2013. 

Mireles’s father had been one of his initial supporters. He had instruments for his sons to experiment on and always had a nurturing word. The title of the album, Animo, comes from a Spanish word that was regularly on his lips, meaning “cheer up.” 

In 2015, Mireles and Reyes decided to head east, the saxophonist being accepted into the masters program at William Patterson University. After school, Mireles began to find work as a musician and as a concert/event producer. He even began The Jazz Exchange, bringing jazz programming to young musicians around New York City, Texas, and Mexico. 

Mireles put together his own group to perform his music. Bassist Myles Sloniker has been a longtime friend and collaborator, beginning with their Frontera Project six years ago. Mireles has long appreciated the work of pianist Benito Gonzales and began playing with him a number of years ago. Mireles met drummer E.J. Strickland when their gigs crossed over in Mexico City, the two striking up an immediate rapport.

Animo

Listen

Abel Mireles - Listen

From Alex Harding and Lucian Ban's "Blutopia" (5/17/24) on Sunnyside Records. 

The relationship between Alex Harding and Lucian Ban has been long and fruitful. Their combination of elements of improvisational music have helped the pair develop a unique musical language that transcends the expectations of the jazz genre. Their new recording, Blutopia, highlights their attuned rapport while allowing their music to unfold with their own singular ensemble, propelled by the tuba stylings of the great Bob Stewart.

Pianist Lucian Ban arrived in New York City from Romania to study at the New School in 1998. As he first began to immerse himself into the local scene, Ban was fortunate to hear baritone saxophonist Alex Harding. The two hit it off immediately and formed a fast friendship leading to musical collaboration. This led to Ban providing a handful of songs for Harding and Harding becoming an essential voice on Ban’s recording debut on their co-led album, Somethin’ Holy (CIMP, 2002). 

It was Harding’s unique voice that attracted Ban, one that had also captured the ears of many legendary collaborators, including Sun Ra, Muhal Richard Abrams, and Julius Hemphill. Harding’s heartfelt and blues-drenched baritone sax playing lent well to Ban’s open-minded and improvisatory approach to music. Harding’s visceral style lent an edge and authenticity to their music, a sound and feeling anchored in the blues that Ban came to the States to try to discover and absorb. Their communion was a true celebration of the spirit, as both found something in the other to help free their spirit in performance.

Harding was essential in introducing the young pianist to the luminaries of the jazz scene, including Sam Newsome, Nasheet Waits, Brad Jones, and the incredible tuba player Bob Stewart. These relationships have been long lasting and essential to the pair’s musical development.

As the years have gone by, the duo has been growing and evolving. The pair’s most recent release was a duo album, entitled Dark Blue (Sunnyside, 2019), which showcased their inspiring level of communication in a transparent setting. The past few decades have provided Ban and Harding a number of new regular musical partners with whom they have established an equal level of rapport, most notably Mat Maneri, a truly unique voice on viola. 

On Blutopia, Harding and Ban have decided to bring together an ensemble that bridges their two musical worlds even further by including old friends Bob Stewart, Brandon Lewis, and Maneri. Of course, Stewart is well known as one of the most heralded improvising tuba players. Drummer Lewis remains a longtime collaborator and a regular on the New York jazz scene. The quintet came together to record Blutopia at The Bunker Studio in Brooklyn on August 29, 2023.

Blutopia

Alex Harding & Lucian Ban - Blutopia

From Tony Moreno Trio's "Ballads Volume 1" (5/24/24) on Sunnyside Records.

There is something timeless in the performance of a jazz ballad. By nature, they are very open to unique interpretation. Drummer Tony Moreno inherited an appreciation for ballads from his mother, a professional harpist, which eventually led to Moreno regularly performing them with his Trio. After twenty years of leading the group, Moreno has compiled some of his mother’s favorites to record with the trio on their debut album, Ballads Volume 1.

Moreno grew up in New York City under the sway of his mother Nina Dunkel’s musical lead. Dunkel garnered rave reviews for her debut concert at Carnegie Hall at 19 years old and went on to study with Nadia and Lili Boulanger in Paris. Regardless of her pedigree, Dunkel found it difficult find a regular position in the orchestras of 1950s United States. She was relegated to playing restaurant and hotel gigs, adding a bit of elegance for tourists on their stays in New York City.

Rather than be discouraged, Dunkel developed a love of the jazz canon and invented a unique way of pedaling her harp to allow herself to play jazz changes. She was especially fond of a regular gig performing at the VIP lounge at the Charles French Restaurant where she met many of legends of the music, including Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, and Alec Wilder.

Dunkel passed her love of jazz to her son. Upon his request, she escorted Moreno to hear drumming legend Elvin Jones at the La Boheme Club. Meeting Jones set Moreno in motion on his life’s journey as a professional jazz drummer. Moreno also caught Dunkel’s appreciation for ballads, as their lyricism and transparency drew his ears. 

Flashing forward, Moreno found a home for his musical experiments with his trio of pianist Frank Kimbrough and bassist François Moutin at the 55 Bar in the West Village. Their group’s monthly residency allowed the trio to get progressively freer with their playing, stretching standard material farther and farther. Some of their favorite pieces to perform were standards that Moreno had first heard under the fingers of his mother on her harp. 

After Kimbrough passed away in 2020, Moreno enlisted his occasional substitute Gary Versace to fill the vacancy permanently. Though 55 Bar closed in 2020, primarily due to the negative effects of the Covid pandemic, and performance opportunities in New York have become more limited in general, the trio still reforms often and with incredible, spontaneous results. 

In the fall of 2022, Moreno, Versace, and Moutin decided to finally document their special group. For their recording, they pared their sixty pieces from Dunkel’s regularly performed repertoire to a more manageable number for an album. Versace lent his talents toward reharmonizing many of the pieces, which that and the group’s effortless reinterpretations made the pieces they recorded at Oktaven Studios a fascinating collection of reimagined standards.

Abel Mireles - Listen

Sunnyside Records

Related tracks