A couple of Sundays ago, I attended a concert in The Roost series here in Albuquerque, and
afterward, I did something that music journalists rarely do: I bought the CD. I could have gotten a review copy from the publicist, but I didn’t want to wait that long. I wanted to listen to it in the car on the way home. Lucky for me, the price was right.
The artist was pianist/composer Brian Haas, who is touring the country in support of his upcoming release, Frames, a collection of 11 compositions for piano and drums. The tour will take him around the country playing the music with several different drummers over the next few months. Here in New Mexico, he played with Dave Wayne, a stalwart on the progressive music scene. They improvised freely on and between the album’s tunes, and they had a blast doing it. We in the audience had a blast, too.
Frames, Brian Haas and Matt Chamberlain (The Royal Potato Family/Kinnara Records)
Frames, the third release from pianist/composer Brian Haas under his own name, presents 11 brief but thoroughly engaging through-composed pieces for piano and drums. Written by Haas, they’re performed by him and Grammy-winning drummer Matt Chamberlain, with
assistance from Peter Tomshany (guitar), producer Costas Stasinopoulos (synths/
programming), and Chris Combs (synths). Best-known as a founding member of the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, Haas pulls from a wide range of influences stretching from Prokofiev to James P. Johnson, from Philip Glass to Flying Lotus, to paint a picture of an imagined life in a succession of sonic images stretching from birth to death and beyond.