专辑名称：What Happens Next
歌手名称：Ray Suhy / Lewis Porter
发行时间：2025-03-21
发行公司：Sunnyside
One of the more exciting aspects of jazz and other improvised music is the drama in its unpredictability. There have been sages in the music that mastered the art of surprise, providing decades of inspiration for aspiring performers and dedicated listeners. Ray Suhy and Lewis Porter have captured the fire of these sonic explorers, presenting their latest offerings on their new recording, a diverse collection of pieces that will keep listeners on the edge of their seats. The title, What Happens Next, is deliberately provocative and open-ended.
Guitarist Suhy was captured by the transcendental sounds of John Coltrane and Miles Davis during his early musical studies. Though he is perhaps best known as the lead guitarist in the death metal band Six Feet Under, Suhy has always remained tied to jazz as a vehicle for his self-expression. Porter has a devotion to the music as a pianist, performer and scholar. He was a longtime professor and director of the Rutgers-Newark University’s Jazz History program and, now, publishes Playback with Lewis Porter on Substack.
The two were introduced by mutual friend and collaborator, saxophonist-composer Allen Lowe. The pair’s instant connection was due to their affinity for the music of Coltrane and other boundary breakers of music. Since their meeting, Suhy and Porter have recorded three albums, collections of original music inspired by their broad musical inspirations and their brilliant collaborative bandmates.
Drummer Rudy Royston returns on What Happens Next. He is a perfectly creative timekeeper who Porter met while the drummer studied at Rutgers. He has become an instrumental part of Suhy and Porter’s Quartet, as his crisp dynamism is only matched by his arranger’s mentality. Sharing the same arranging brilliance, Joris Teepe returns to his bass role with his rounded, sonorous tone and singular soloist style.
For their new record, Suhy and Porter wanted to broaden their sound palette and present a program of music that honored other influences while expanding their range. When the Quartet entered Teaneck Sound on April 17, 2023, they came with a number of legends on their mind, including Thelonious Monk and the recently departed Wayne Shorter, whose work with the Miles Davis Quintet was a foundational inspiration to Suhy.
The recording begins with Suhy’s “Four Worlds,” a piece that evolved from the guitarist’s study with Garry Dial and was inspired by the Kabbalah’s manifestation of four worlds. Suhy utilizes a pentatonic scale over four different chords to construct this modal work. Suhy’s “Ralos” was written for Porter and is a contrafact of one of Porter’s favorite jazz standards, “Solar.” The quartet’s performance leans into an Indian classical music drone and then morphs into uptempo swing over the usual chord changes.
The guitarist’s moody “The Path To You” emerged from a triadic exercise that developed into a meditative piece that provides a fantastic solo opportunity for Porter. “Saturn” is named for Suhy’s favorite celestial body, the piece a quick and spirited, modal excursion with an intrepid drum solo from Royston. Porter’s “Mournful Interlude” is a short, fully composed piece that sets the mood and connects to the quartet’s take on Thelonious Monk’s “Brake’s Sake,” which is performed in an uncanny, offbeat way.
Suhy’s “Volition” continues in a bright and intense manner, trying to capture the essence of Coltrane’s spirit on his piece “Transition.” Teepe’s resonant bass introduces “All The Things and Then Some,” a piece that explores the ever-engaging chord changes of Jerome Kern’s masterpiece, “All The Things You Are.” The program concludes with Porter’s “A Hopeful Song,” a piece the pianist wrote to inspire listeners to maintain a hopeful attitude, with a playful melody, a dancing rhythm and an ecstatic performance from Suhy.
The partnership between Ray Suhy and Lewis Porter continues to evolve and expand as they delve further into the worlds of improvisation and jazz. Together they hope to excite and surprise, as they continue on their musical journey with their new recording, What Happens Next.
01. Four Worlds
02. Ralos
03. The Path to You
04. Saturn
05. Mournful Interlude
06. Brake's Sake
07. Volition
08. All the Things and Then Some
09. A Hopeful Song
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https://music.163.com/#/album?id=260433161