Tag Archives: newhaven

Revisiting Miles Yet Again…

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There’s no way to down play the importance of Miles’s music through out his career, and his work from the early 1970’s is no exception what so ever.
For the last couple of months I have been working on new material for what will hopefully be a sequel album to Time Circuit.
I want to write more compositions in my own electric style but instead of writing out tunes that have various forms and chord changes, I want to focus on what I call the “groove tunes.”
These tunes are the type you see on my records from the very beginning. They’re nothing new in my composition and improvisational style. Jazz to the bone, but instead with layers of rhythmic vamps and variations that allow the band to develop the song as a unit, changing it from performance to performance.
Great examples of songs in this style from Miles’s catalog for anyone interested are: It’s About That Time, Shhhh/Peaceful, What I Say, Ali, Johnny Bratton, Go Ahead John, Honky Tonk, and honestly man more. Additional songs are Herbie’s Ostinato and Bennie Maupin’s Neophilia.
This style, which I’ve noticed the jazz police scoffing at, is my wheelhouse. I was a bassist born in a trumpeter’s body. I’m obsessed with the groove and layering rhythms over tunes. There’s just so much material out there to check out: Dave Holland, Alex Sipiagin, Steve Coleman, David Binney, Christian McBride and John Escreet all include this style in their own music as well.
Right now, I have plenty of songs written for the follow up to TC but I can’t decide whether to go in a more groove, open direction or basically replicate TC by including more structured tunes.
It’s kind of a funny thing to think about. On one hand you have the “if it ain’t broke… school of thought and just continue with what works or the “hey man, expand yourself and try for different things school.” I feel either way is a win/win, I mean I’m not trying to revolutionize music by any means but I guess it’s just something to think about.

Review of Time Circuit: New Haven Independent

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By Brian Slattery | Sep 24, 2015 6:47 am

http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/nick_di_maria_grooves_on/

“Black Rock,” the opening cut from Nick Di Maria’s Time Circuit, starts with a calm, spaced-out organ loop, atmospheric drums. Then a four-note bass line drops in, giving a sense of what’s ahead. Without warning, yet coming in right where it sound, the drums set off on a rhythm that wouldn’t be out of place on a James Brown record. And then there’s Di Maria’s trumpet, clear and precise. Except that it’s also run through a wah-wah pedal.

https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/220602534&color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true

The arguments over jazz — what it is and what it isn’t, whether it’s alive or dead — aren’t going away any time soon. Meanwhile, a lot of musicians are planting their flags in one era of it or another. The past few years have seen a crop of young bands going all the way back to the beginning, making the same kind of sound jazz bands made in the 1920s. New Haven’s own Firehouse 12, which starts up its fall concert series this Friday, has become a kind of fortress for the music in its most contemporary incarnation. Somewhere out there, someone must be shredding Charlie Parker licks. On Time Circuit, New Haven-based trumpeter Nick Di Maria casts his lot with the jazz of the 1970s: Miles Davis when he shed some of his utter cool and started hanging out with electric guitar players, Herbie Hancock at what many consider the height of his powers.

And judging from the resulting album — Di Maria’s fourth, which he released earlier this month—it’s a pretty good place to be. Di Maria and his band (click on the sound file above for a sample) have been gigging pretty relentlessly for a while, and it shows. On the album, Andrew Kosiba on Fender Rhodes electric piano, Andrew Zwart on bass, and Eric Hallenbeck on drums are a tight, sinuous unit. They know what to do with the material and do it right.

The album’s devotion to the 1970s isn’t slavish either. Kosiba’s Rhodes is something of a sonic signifier of that era, but — appropriate to the title of the album — having started circa 1973, the band easily moves backward and forward through time from there. For good measure, on a few cuts (“Balance” and “Decoy”) the group shows that it hasn’t forgotten how to swing like they did in the 1950s. But the most successful pieces on the album (in this reporter’s humble opinion, “Black Rock,” “Drift,” and “The Poet”) are the ones that take the sound of 1970s jazz and update it, subtly but surely, making the kind of record one can make now that we’ve had four decades to digest what that era of jazz was all about.

In Di Maria’s case, he thoughtfully tones down a lot of that era’s excesses, but keeps intact its propulsive rhythmic sensibilities, its shifting harmonic density, and the wider sonic palette that’s possible when musicians go electric. This makes Time Circuit an intelligent and emotional record, sometimes moody, sometimes playful, and often danceable. It is, in a word, groovy.

Been busy

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Hey folks-

I just finally found a moment to sit down and update the website and here goes my attempt at any kind of informational harbinger for all of you to enjoy… because I know you all have been waiting to hear what I’ve been up to.

The newest news! I have yet another album out. This time its by one of my many side projects with Jeff Cedrone and Mike Rasimas called the Zero Dollar Trio. We recorded a live performance at The Outer Space, Hamden’s and perhaps Greater New Haven’s best and only legit jazz club.

The trio plays completely free and full of every genre and style you can think of. Jeff is a gizmo guy who often times also shreds your face off with his riff, Marc Ribot style guitar playing. On the album he also doubled on synthesizer which was absolutely killer to improvise over. Mike Rasimas is one of the best drummers I’ve ever worked with. He’s one of those few drummers who listens to everything you spill out and knows how to support you and give the occasion push off the cliff into musical bitchin’-ness.

The three of us don’t get to play together too often due to our pursuits so its a very exciting feeling to release a record together. Having it from a live gig also makes it enjoyable because any musician can attest to the energy you feel from a crowd.

You can check out the record at http://www.the-zero-dollar-trio.bandcamp.com

So the snow ruined a lot. Haha, in fact my life is over. Ok, not really.

So in February, we had a record setting blizzard. 30 inches of snow in less than 24 hours. Needless to say it was pretty nuts. It took me three days to shovel out. The snow cancelled 4 gigs in a row including the Winter Jazz Festival we were on the line up for at The Outer Space. The show had us with 4 other groups and all the profits were going to be donated to Jimmy Greene and his family in memory of his daughter. I was so pumped to play the new quartet album for potentially a huge audience. Luckily though, the snow did not cancel the CD Release party the following weekend.

The response to the new album, The Beatnik, is really positive. Modestly I’ll admit people have been saying they not only like the over all sound but the compositions and the playing. Doesn’t get any better than that!

We have gigs every saturday this month so I’m looking forward to playing the material and getting more copies to more, and especially new, sets of ears!

Lastly in terms of new albums, I’m planning another live record for this summer. I’m hoping to do a sextet date with an added tenor saxophone and trombone and play some new originals and lesser known jazz classics. I’ve been obsessed with Herbie Hancock’s Speak Like A Child and am in the process of arranging it so it can be played with the band in the same style we play Toys. In the same vein I’ve been writing new compositions in the style of Mwandishi, and early electric Miles. I really don’t mind it that my influences are so obvious in my sound. They made me who I am and how I play right? Let my voice evolve from that.

I’ve been on a quest to get the band or at least myself in other cities. My ultimate dream is to gig in Portland, Seattle and Frisco with a local rhythm section and hopefully one day my own. In the mean time I’ve been networking for gigs in Philadelphia, Providence and Boston. Being an unknown jazz musician makes it tougher than ever. We’ll see but the more I network and sit in with other bands the better chances.

Well that’s good for now. See you in the funnies.