BY JOSEPH NEFF | MAY 8, 2020
NEW RELEASE PICKS: Michael Thomas, Event Horizon (Giant Step Arts)Sometimes, the label releasing a record can serve as a doorway to more music of a similar stripe, or if not in the same style, than just stand as a signifier of quality. For obvious reasons, this scenario is now almost exclusive to independent labels as the big companies have long been predominantly profit driven. Well, Giant Step Arts, the label started by noted photographer Jimmy Katz, isn’t obsessed with profit. In Katz’s words, the label doesn’t even sell any music, but rather strives “to help musicians make bold artistic statements and to advance their careers.” In addition to premiering performances, recording them, and compensating the artists, once a project is complete, 700 compact discs (the complete run) and downloads are given to the leader of the session, who importantly retains ownership of the masters. Giant Step Arts also provides promo photos, videos and PR for the release.
If this reads more like a philanthropic concern than a label in a traditional sense, well yes and no; as insinuated by the name of the label, Katz wants those invited to create masterpiece-level work. This entails dedication that isn’t synonymous with prolificacy, with this set from Grammy-winning saxophonist Michael Thomas only the fourth Giant Step Arts release since 2018. For the recording, Thomas assembled a quartet featuring trumpeter Jason Palmer (leader of Giant Step Arts 001, Rhyme and Reason), double bassist Hans Glawischnig, and drummer Johnathan Blake (leader of GSA 002, Trion, and the drummer for GSA 003, saxophonist Eric Alexander’s Leaf of Faith). The results, spanning across two discs (all of the Giant Step Arts releases except Alexander’s single disc are 2CD sets), do rise to the level of masterpiece. Notably, it’s a live performance, a setting absolutely essential to the jazz idiom.
Now, studio recordings are also crucial, with two of Katz’s models for Giant Step Arts being Miles’ Kind of Blue and Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. But in promoting works unveiled on a live stage, there seems to be a simultaneous desire to elude the pressures, stresses and obsessiveness that can undermine studio recordings made within or outside of current commercial settings (the mersh settings that produced Blue and Supreme don’t really exist anymore). In short: work your asses off in prep, but then get on the bandstand and let it fly. Thomas and his crew do just that, exploring eight of the saxophonist’s compositions (plus solos intros for bass, sax, and drums) in an elevated manner (through the strength of familiarity) that’s truly searching while never straying that far from the richness of jazz in its classic Modern mode. That is, Event Horizon isn’t warmed-over turkey, not for a second, as its creators make abundantly clear that brilliance bursting forth from established jazz traditions is still a possibility. A