I’m excited to announce the release of SnapDragon’s first album “The Long and the Short of It: Duo Improvisations.”  This album features fourteen free improvisations with Bob Meyer on drums and yours truly on alto saxophone.  It is a noteworthy addition to my catalog of albums because, with the exception of the CD design and artwork, it is entirely a DIY self release.  Bob and I recorded and co-produced it ourselves, and I mixed and mastered it.

I first met Bob at Quinn’s in Beacon, NY in 2016.  I was playing there with John Menegon’s Quartet, and Bob sat in on a couple of tunes.  It was evident that we had an immediate musical hook up, with a similar approach to phrasing, energy, and spirit.  A few months later he played a couple of tunes on my “Seas & Trees” CD Release Show (also at Quinn’s! ) and it was the same amazing vibe once again.  We both agreed we needed to get together and explore this connection further! Shortly after we started playing at his studio on a weekly basis, primarily as a duo with me switching between sax and piano, and Bob going between his vintage drum kits.  Our starting point was “playing free” with a few Monk tunes interspersed.  What we quickly discovered was that our improvisations were yielding concise, diverse, and  compositionally sound musical statements that felt great to create in the moment.  SnapDragon was born!

Bob and I continued to get together regularly, and in early 2017 we decided to record some of our improvisations.  Mainly we wanted to hear if that feeling of connection and coherence we were feeling when improvising was being translated to the listener.   We were skeptical initially, because what we were doing felt easy – maybe too easy? I’m happy to say that upon listening we found our free improvisations to be viable, complete, and  hitting the mark we were intending.  Consequently, we decided to make an album, and the material on “The Long and the Short of It…” was garnered from several recording sessions between January – April 2017.

So here we are at the beginning of 2019, and “The Long and the Short of It: Duo Improvisations” is currently available as a digital download on CDBaby.com, and over the next few days will be available on ITunes, Spotify, and pretty much any digital platform you can think of.  To celebrate the release of the album Bob and I are going to playing our first gig under the SnapDragon moniker at ShapeShifter Lab on Friday, January 18th at 8pm, one set only.  Please come out and join us in the process of our music making, which, since it’s going to be free improvised, a completely unique performance!