While unabashed in their textural play, ETST makes a grounding gesture by rooting their name in the language of landscape and the album title in the language of crafts. The discipline and experience of each member can be heard in the careful control of mixed-meters and the mutual trust amongst one another that allows each to add their colors to the mix.
If you’re a diehard mainstream fan, keyboard player Philip Woo is probably the most successful Seattle jazz musician you’ve never heard of. Woo came up with Kenny G in the prize-winning Franklin High School Jazz Lab Band in the early ‘70s and was playing in New York at 19 with vibist and pianist Roy Ayers, and has pursued an illustrious career as a first-call sideman in jazz-funk, soul, fusion, pop, and bands.
So yes, there are plenty of jazz songs to play, and the standards certainly aren’t going anywhere. But to write your own music, to dare to put your spirit on the staff, is a virtue in itself.
“The community is strong,” said local saxophonist Alex Dugdale. “When the government is like, ‘Yeah, we don’t care about your music,’ there are certain people who will step in and say, how much do you need to get your music done?”
If you’re thinking that a solo trombone can’t hold its own on eight tracks spanning up to nine minutes a piece, well, you’d be forgiven. You’d also be wrong. The TANK’s unearthly soundscape fills Clausen’s songs with a lush carpet of harmonic interplay, so rich as to border on the bizarre. (See: Clausen’s take on “Pure Imagination” from Willy Wonka.) Notes can resonate in The TANK for up to 45 seconds.
Lisa Hagen Glynn is one of Earshot’s most dedicated photographers who can be found nearly every night of the annual month-long festival, capturing the brilliance on and off stage.
After a celebrated career that spans more than three decades at Earshot Jazz, friends, family, and community share their fondest memories and well wishes for John Gilbreath as he retires from his role as executive director.
The Golden Ear Awards celebrate the outstanding achievements of Seattle jazz artists over the previous years.
Earshot Jazz honors jazz as a vital Black American art form through live performance presentations, artist advocacy, and community engagement.
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