Remember CDs?

Part 2 - JSN Quinteto - Live in Olympia

I will continue to remind folks here that there is an entire world of recorded music that you can have to explore in depth in your own time. In some cases it will take years for someone to listen to a piece of music carefully, just like you would with a good book or a painting. Our current modern paradigm is that music is like wallpaper, a streaming background that runs underneath our awareness and sometimes collides with events in our life, making them meaningful. Nothing wrong with that, but think of how much we miss by just skimming through art because we are “busy”. I can see on my social media posts that on a video that lasts about one minute (such as my Musical Advent Calendar posts) the average time spent on it is less than 10 seconds. I know that I cannot change people’s minds, but it’s worthwhile reminding that sometimes you can actually dive into music in a way that makes the time of clocks and minutes disappear, opening up a totally new dimension.

All this is to remind you that I have CDs available for purchase on my website . Today I’d like to explore the live album that I recorded with my Quinteto at the State Theater in Olympia, WA in 2000, Live in Olympia. I had been preparing the music for several months, when I found out that our regular woodwind player Hans Teuber had been invited to tour with Ani DiFranco and would not be available to play with us. Hans recommended his friend Harvey Wainapel, who arrived in Seattle from San Francisco one day before the concert and managed to learn this very complex set of music in a short time. Harvey played soprano, alto, tenor saxes and clarinet, and since then he has become a super good friend and reliable musician to play with. This record also marks the debut of Jeff Busch on percussion. Jeff started to play with me in local gigs in 1996, and he brought a deep feeling for Brazilian grooves and a joyful approach to making music which continues to this day.

Of course, bassist Chuck Deardorf (who sadly left us in 2022) and drummer Mark Ivester had been my musical companions since 1993, when I moved to Seattle.

This album was recorded live by producer Chris Chappell for Liquid City Records (the original engineer had a medical emergency and could not be there) and there were no overdubs, just a lot of work to adjust the sound. We ran the digital audio through an analog tape recorder’s heads to add warmth and depth to the sound, and we also needed to address the fact that the saxophone microphone had been positioned wrongly during our first set. Thanks to the work of studio wizards Sam Hofstead and Reed Ruddy at Studio X in Seattle for doing their magic.

The music is varied, and includes sambas like Mendanha and Pitombeira, my arrangement of the Luis Americano choro Intrigas no Boteco do Padilha for piano and clarinet, a slow ballad (The Flowing of the Night, which we recorded in a video years later) and a crazy composition, Macaé, named after a beautiful city north of Rio. Also a 7/4 theme (Jujuba) and a toada (A Mountain Atop A Mountain). The cover was designed by Ja Poolsawad.

I am not sure that giving you the context in which the music was produced will give you a better feel for it, but I can tell you for sure that one CD that you purchase directly from me is equivalent to about 5000 streams on that “S” streaming service that uses your money to pay its executives so they can invest in heavy weaponry. No, thanks!

Here’s the link to purchase the album directly from my website. I’ll sign it and ship it to you or to anyone else you wish. All included in the price. Immune to world politics, Internet outages and earthquakes.

Of course, I am grateful for your support of my music!

Happy holidays,

Jovino