First of all, until today I never in my life heard of Matt Garrity. Obviously I have been living under a rock. So first things first some skeletal biog.
The American jazz drummer’s website which is called Barnstock adds some necessary details.
The drummer hails from Ithaca, New York State. He was a student at renowned jazz talent incubator William Paterson College in New Jersey. He’s clearly not a beginner as he has been on a few records and paid his dues schlepping around on the road with various luminaries.
The setting is tenor sax, bass, piano and drums. Tunes include MG originals and there’s a version of John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet’s ‘Milestones’ (Miles played it but it’s not the much better known tune with the same name that Miles himself wrote).
Confused? You won’t be stylistically. Instead a swinging bebop soaked approach means it’s good meat and potatoes stuff. Solid fare. Nobody is trying to reinvent the wheel.
But neither is Suits and Scotches the work of jazzers who believe the earth is flat. It’s for grown ups, not T-shirt clad diet coke sippers. In other words it isn’t immature but it could easily have been the reverse stubbornly cranky, as the direction delves into music that owes its origins largely to the 1940s and lends itself easily enough to indulgent pipe and slipperdom. These cats haven’t been distracted by the diktats of dumbed down fadiness and utterly exhausting TikTokery that is everywhere.
SteepleChase as a label knows exactly what it wants to put out and has just as firm an identity in the bebop realm as others dabble with in other idioms. I’d be shocked if this Danish outfit put out a nu jazz offering. They have more sense than do that given how underwhelming a lot of nu jazz happens to be given it prefers style over substance relying on dull vamps and relentless overuse of the Fender Rhodes.
Speaking of substance there is plenty of it on Suits and Scotches. But I could have done without yet another version of 30s song ‘Old Folks’ and prefer the Christian McBride big band and Samara Joy’s very recently released version of the same piece.
But taking on McCoy Tyner’s The Real McCoy classic ‘Search For Peace’ is a very good idea and I warmed to the pianist a bit more on this rendering.
Quibble of a quo vadis on the Darth Vader
Playing John Williams Star Wars piece ‘Imperial March’ is a bit bizarre. But you gotta have a gimmick.
Pick of the whole caboodle isn’t it however but is instead a Garrity original, the latin-jazz number ‘Mado and Me’ for the writing; and for the drummer best bits: the uptempo comping from Garrity on Suits and Scotches is swell. Very American – I’ve even gone a bit ‘merican writing “swell”. Stockholm syndrome or what? I’ll be typing awesome next in capital letters and flogging Teslas to mugs.
It’s fun and as a general comment cheered me up no end given that I have been trying for days to find a new album I actually don’t hate and failing woefully until I found this dark horse and good outside bet if, dearly dishevelled, you want to try someone new.
I’m an Adam Nussbaum and Billy Drummond fan. So this is close to my taste in drummers and clearly the guys qualify as outsiders and underdogs too given they aren’t being fawned over by the usual suspects who only love the avant garde and get sniffy about everything else even if it’s good. And this is.
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If the title isn’t enough to give you a hint as to the kind of music you can expect from this album, cast your mind back to the sounds of the ‘Young Lions’ wave of the 1980s and 90s that revitalised the bop sound, and that should do the trick. First entering the jazz world in the 1990s, drummer Matt Garrity was swept up in that very jazz movement; one that rejected the parallel-running fusion scene and, led by the likes of Wynton Marsalis, celebrated the traditional. Though branching further out from this sound across his career, in many ways Garrity returns full circle with his debut album, the swinging Suits and Scotches.
Establishing his reputation as a reliable and experienced sideman, Garrity became a staple of the New York jazz scene, playing alongside big names such as Joe Lovano, Vincent Herring, and Joel Forrester. Over the last few decades, he’s played some of the most prestigious venues in the city: from The Blue Note to Birdland and Smalls. Now, for the first time, he records his own album as the bandleader and primary composer of an ensemble that features longstanding collaborators Vito Dieterle on tenor sax, Steve Einerson on piano, and David Ambrosio on bass.
The album opens with a Garrity original, ‘Bird Call’, a catchy tenor sax riff from Dieterle establishing a nice groove. The ensemble keeps things brisk, Garrity’s drums light and buoyant whilst Ambrosio’s bass is bouncy, and Einerson’s piano harmonically pads the ensemble until he takes a spirited solo that charts some more ambitious harmonic waters. Bass and drums engage in some pretty intricate interplay later in this track, and it’s a good example of the calibre of all involved and what to expect from the album.
Another Garrity composition, ‘376A’ is comparatively a much smoother sound – showcasing his skill as a composer – and yet his drumming still bustles with a quiet synergy that means that the ensemble’s sound never falls flat. Their take on John Lewis’ ‘Milestones’, made famous by Miles Davis, is a tight and clean cover. Dieterle’s agile saxophone lines are melodic and expressive, his solo gradually becoming more technical and intricate as it goes along. Einerson’s shimmering piano solo follows with plenty of sparkle, and makes for an enjoyable listen.
Garrity’s ‘Mado n’ Me’ allows him to explore a Latin-feel, the sway of the saxophone paving the way for a series of solos that culminates in a skillful demonstration of Garrity’s drum skills, and McCoy Tyner’s ‘Search For Peace’ is a contemplative and hymn-like performance where Dieterle’s saxophone is languid and soulful.
It’s the conclusion, though, that will surprise many, and was entirely an unexpected track for me on this album. The ensemble takes a dramatically fresh approach to none other than Star Wars’ ‘Imperial March’, and from the moody and atmospheric opening Garrity’s ingenuity is clear as he transforms the symphonic movie classic into a jazz standard. Switching between time signatures whilst keeping the heavy swing feel, the piece evolves into a more avant-garde section that is rife with harmonic tension, Dieterle’s saxophone solo soaring over the top. With this one, Darth Vader’s menace gets a makeover – and rather than relentless brute force, musically it pulses with growing tension and unease instead.
With many newly-released traditional quartet albums on the market, there’s a sense that it’s easy to get lost in the crowd. But in this case, I’m surprised that it’s taken so long for Garrity to make an album under his own name – and for many who enjoy that traditional bebop and hard bop sound, this is a fine offering from someone who has long been a central figure to the New York jazz scene.
