RICHMOND, Calif., June 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Dan Willis puts his idiosyncratic spin on the
tunes of the godfather of jazz idiosyncrasy with the July 17 release of "The Monk Project" (Belle
Avenue). The saxophonist/multi-reedist's fourth album with his
ensemble Velvet Gentlemen—guitarist Pete
McCann, keyboardist Ron
Oswanski, bassist Evan
Gregor, and drummer John
Mettam (with special guests bassist Kermit Driscoll and drummer Ian Froman)—is an intriguing and highly
exploratory set of performances that, like Thelonious Monk's compositions, could never be
mistaken for the work of anyone else.
Though it follows up "The Satie Project," Velvet Gentlemen's
two-volume assaying of the French modernist composer, "The Monk
Project" actually began life as a solo saxophone concept for
Willis. Not far into it, however, he realized that his non-chordal
instrument was insufficient to the task of Monk's ideas. "Monk
plays orchestrationally," Willis explains. "On saxophone, I can
only play one note at a time. There was no way I could play up to
what Monk performed."
Bringing in the band let him account for the composer's multiple
layers of melody and meaning. In the process, it expanded Willis's
personal palette for the project: He plays three different
saxophones (tenor, soprano, and baritone), along with two wind
instruments from central Eurasia, the duduk and the zurna—and, in
several places, the electronic wind instrument (EWI).
If this sounds cerebral and highfalutin, however, it's anything
but. Tunes like "Eronel" and "Criss
Cross" take on a seamy, creeping funk, while "Crepuscule
with Nellie," "Rhythm-a-Ning," and "Pannonica" capture the dark,
earthy mystery of New Orleans and
the Mississippi Delta, where jazz and blues came to be. "Our aim,"
says Willis, "became to get a lot more lowdown and dirty to fully
capture the blues aspect of this music."
Group effort though it became, "The Monk Project" still manages
to be a tour de force for Willis himself. On "Epistrophy" alone, he
masterfully wields three different axes, alternating tenor sax and
EWI on the main theme before laying down a simmering solo on a
distortion tenor saxophone. The EWI becomes the primary voice for
the album-closing "Think of One"—a tip of the hat to Michael Brecker. The instrument, Willis says, is
particularly suited to Monk's "orchestrational" approach to
composition: "You can play one note and make it sound like a large
orchestra."
Dan Willis was born Daniel Wieloszynski in Fredonia, New York, on September 23, 1968. The scion of a large musical
family that included his father, arranger and multi-instrumentalist
Stephen Wieloszynski, Willis
experimented with drums, piano, and trumpet before finally settling
on saxophone. By the time he was 12, he was sitting in on jazz gigs
in nearby Buffalo.
Following in his father's footsteps, Willis enrolled after high
school in the Eastman School of Music
in Rochester, New York. There was
no undergraduate jazz program at the time; however, while Willis
formally majored in oboe (and was a featured soloist on English
horn with the Eastman Philharmonia), he nonetheless studied jazz
with eminent faculty members Bill
Dobbins, Ramon Ricker, and
Dave Liebman.
Upon graduation he embarked for Europe with a touring production of West Side
Story, then settled in New Jersey
to become a freelance musician and study with Bob Mintzer. He made his first recording, "Dan
Willis Quartet" (1998), with a band featuring guitarist
Ben Monder, bassist Drew Gress, and drummer John Hollenbeck. The following year's "Hand to
Mouth" brought guitarist Pete McCann
into Willis's orbit; pianist/keyboardist Ron Oswanski arrived in 2003 with "Velvet
Gentlemen," establishing Willis's primary musical vehicle that
after nearly two decades is still thriving.
"The pandemic has touched our lives in such a profound way,"
says Willis. "Aside from the economic hardship of the disappearance
of performance opportunities it has, for some, been a very
difficult time where we hesitate to create for fear of an uncertain
future. I think of 'what would my heroes do or say to me for
advice?' I almost immediately began to wonder if this would be for
me what it was like for Sonny
Rollins and his almost two-year-long self-imposed isolation.
Would I create my 'The Bridge' [Rollins's 1962 masterpiece]?
Ultimately, life is about the journey, not the destination."
SOURCE Terri Hinte Public Relations