| 1 CD |
€ 14.95
|
Preorder |
| Label Double Moon Records |
UPC 0608917146325 |
Catalogue number DMCHR 71463 |
Release date 26 September 2025 |
"... Melancholic and wistful."
Jazzthing, 26-8-2025It's not always fair even in the jazz world. If it were otherwise, violinist Zack Brock and pianist Phil Markowitz would be among well-known, internationally celebrated, great musicians. But if you listen to what people in the music scene say, there is fortunately a different picture. The two Americans enjoy an excellent reputation. Not the least, their numerous engagements and albums speak for this.
Most of these days, the name Zach Brock is associated with Snarky Puppy. He has been playing regularly with the versatile collective for years, and he can be heard on eight Snarky albums to date. Brock once belonged to the band of bass ace Stanley Clarke and later to a group of guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, among others. A series of his own albums documents his class and his wide stylistic horizon; "Dirty Mindz", his eleventh, was nominated for a Grammy.
Phil Markowitz is a generation older. His extensive credits include playing along master musicians like Michael Brecker, Al DiMeola, Joe Lovano and David Liebman. They cover a broad spectrum of jazz, from traditional to avant-garde, from his early connections to Chet Baker and Toots Thielemans to his decades-long collaboration with Bob Mintzer.
Several of his albums, which were recorded over the decades, are projects in co-leadership—including the first with Zach Brock, "Perpetuity" (2014). In addition to their musical connection, Markowitz and Brock also have other things in common. Both are experienced and internationally sought-after lecturers. This became the actual starting point for "Stratus", the brilliant album with a top-rate Finnish team: bassist Ville Herrala and drummer Jaska Lukkarinen.
"I'm incredibly happy that this album is finally being released!" Zach Brock stated enthusiastically. "In terms of its meaning, especially with regard to what I want to say musically, this is at the top of my list." At the same time, he emphasized the team character. "Our music might be intellectually and emotionally challenging, but the heart clearly set the tone for us four." Jaska Lukkarinen, who was in charge of the organizational details, corroborated this. "The connection between us was there immediately! Musically and humanly, everything was just right for this project." There was not too much preparation time. Lukkarinen: "It happened in an almost old-fashioned way: a rehearsal, a few concerts, and two days in the studio. Everything went surprisingly smoothly." The decisive factor was the shared certainty that everyone is open to all kinds of things, "that together we can push in all directions in which we are drawn."
Markowitz, Brock, Lukkarinen and Herrala met for the first time in 2017. The violinist and pianist had already had a duo for some time, and they had recorded duo and quartet pieces for the album "Perpetuity". In 2012, Zach Brock approached Phil Markowitz to get fresh impetus for his personal development. Markowitz has long been regarded as an experienced and versatile open-minded jazz educator; he has the ability to inspire even advanced jazz players with his skills and insights.
In 2017, the two accepted an invitation from the renowned Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. During their stay, they took part in a concert on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Dizzy Gillespie. The rhythm group of the evening was formed by two of Finland's outstanding jazz personalities: Ville Herrala and Jaska Lukkarinen. Brock: “I was blown away when I heard those two!" And he continued to rave: "Ville is one of the best bassists I've ever played with – and there were many of them. He’s just a super-bad dude. Just like Jaska. He's just great at playing empathetically while still maintaining high intensity.” Both have been well connected for years and have worked with many of Finland's most prominent jazz acts; the credit lists of productions are long and illustrious.
The musical appreciation was followed by a personal encounter. Mutual sympathy became an equally important basis. Lukkarinen set the framework for the quartet for the following spring. He booked festival appearances in the Finnish north (Oulu, Rovaniemi) and was able to win over national Finnish radio for a studio production. The compositions were provided by Brock and Markowitz. They had already played some of them as a duo, including the Markowitz arrangement of Ellington's "Come Sunday" and Brock's arrangement of the folk song "Black is the Color". Everything that makes Brock or Markowitz special can be found in their own pieces: above all, harmonic and melodic complexity, rhythmic idiosyncrasy, lyrical power – and a very unique signature. All of this comes to life in the closely intertwined interaction of the quartet. It plays like a collective. And at times it sounds as if it had developed togetherness over a longer period of time.
Not surprisingly, the participants emphasized the personal aspect again. When Brock talks about the common music, the words connectedness, love and camaraderie are a matter of course. "This music requires a high degree of vulnerability. I prefer to play with musicians I like, with whom I feel comfortable in every way, so that I can be as free, open and honest as possible." Alone his intimate expression in the opening piece "Wonderment" speaks volumes. Lukkarinen added: "Everyone listens attentively to everyone else, which is not so self-evident." Both agree that Phil Markowitz has a large part to play in this. "He's one of the very fantastic musicians. He plays incredible stuff, but never brags. He is one of those pianists who make everyone else sound better." Lukkarinen had lessons from the American at the Sibelius Academy in 2003, and he went to the Manhattan School of Music in New York for a few years on the advice of Markowitz, . After that, their contact never broke off.
There are various reasons why "Stratus" is only now being released, one of which resulted from the upheavals of the Covid era. After that, production was temporarily forgotten in the maze of time. The common will to follow up on this is all the more powerful now, among other things, with concerts that show and deepen all the qualities of this extraordinary group in every respect.
“I called the great French violinist Jean-Luc Ponty and I said ‘So, who’s the new cat? Who’s got the stuff? And he said Zach Brock.”
— Stanley Clarke, virtuoso bassist & jazz legend
“…not only is he my favorite violinist in the world but he’s also one of my favorite musicians, period.”
— Michael League, founder/bassist of Snarky Puppy
Violinist Zach Brock is a sought-after soloist, sideman, and educator, as well as a multi Grammy Award-winning member of the contemporary jazz band Snarky Puppy. Born to a musical family in Lexington, KY, Zach began studying violin at the age of four and was performing publicly by the age of six. Zach’s improvisational skills were honed in the rich Chicago jazz scene while studying classical violin at Northwestern University. He released his debut album, Zach Brock & The Coffee Achievers, in 2003. Two years and two records later he was invited to perform at Carnegie Hall by trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas. Zach joined the band of legendary bassist Stanley Clarke in 2007 and that same year he relocated to Brooklyn. From 2010 to 2012 Zach led a chord-less trio of violin, bass and drums called The Magic Number and since 2012 he has released three albums on Criss Cross Jazz, as well as two co-led projects with renowned pianist Phil Markowitz. In 2017 Zach formed a new “chord-less” trio with Matt Ulery and Jon Deitemyer. Their collective 2019 album Wonderment garnered rave reviews and inclusion in the “Best of 2019” lists by Downbeat and Jazziz Magazines.
Zach is most widely recognized through his sixteen years of touring and recording with the genre-bending supergroup Snarky Puppy. Since his first appearance on Snarky’s 2008 on Bring Us The Bright, Zach has appeared on seven subsequent recordings including the 2017 Grammy Award-winning album Culcha Vulcha, 2019’s Immigrance, the 2021 Grammy Award-winning Live At The Royal Albert Hall, and the 2023 Grammy-award winning album Empire Central (to which he contributed his song “Honiara''). In February 2023 Zach performed with legendary guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel at the GroundUP Festival in Miami as part of Kurt’s Caipi Band. In November ‘23 GroundUP Records released Drawing Songs, the debut recording by “Brock, Lanzetti, Ogawa,” a new co-led trio with fellow Snarky Puppy members Bob Lanzetti and Keita Ogawa.
A passionate educator, Zach has coached hundreds of musicians through workshops for The 92nd Street Y and Carnegie Hall in NYC, masterclasses at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland and the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio, and as a five-year “Artist In Residence” at Temple University in Philadelphia.
His eleventh solo album, the Grammy-nominated Dirty Mindz featuring Eric Harland, Mark Lettieri, Justin Stanton, and Jonathan Maron, was released in 2022 on GroundUP Records. Zach's latest collaborative album with fellow Snarky Puppy bandmates Bob Lanzetti and Keita Ogawa, the Grammy-nominated album Drawing Songs, was released in November 2023.
Phil Markowitz, is forty year veteran of the International Jazz scene and is dedicated to realizing the full potential of improvisational music within the jazz idiom. He performs original compositions, which range from hard-cutting chromaticism to the most lyrical post-romantic ballads. Inventive, virtuostic, and accessible, Markowitz presents a forward-looking vision for contemporary music. His recordings as leader include “Perputity” on Dottime Records, “Catalysis” on Sunnyside Records, "Taxi Ride" (which features an incredible reunion with his lifelong friend, Toots Thielemans), "In the Woods", "Sno Peas", with Eddie Gomez and Al Foster and "Restless Dreams" (with vibraphonist Joe Locke).
Mr. Markowitz leads his own trio, and a quartet and duo with violinist Zach Brock, and is the pianist in the all-star group "Saxophone Summit" (David Liebman, Joe Lovano and Greg Osby and Billy Hart). His credentials span a cornucopia of jazz; from the traditional to the avant-garde; from his early associations with Chet Baker and Toots Thielemans, through his multi decade affiliations with Bob Mintzer and David Liebman.
In 1979, he joined Chet Baker's band. That four-year association yielded such recordings as "Broken Wing", "Live at Nick's Place", "Two A Day", and "Live at Chateauvalion". Phil has also performed and/or recorded with Mel Lewis, Marion McPartland, Phil Woods, Ravi Coltrane, Michael Brecker, Lionel Hampton, Nick Brignola, Joe Chambers, Miroslav Vitous, and Joe Williams. Phil has a long association with Bob Mintzer and was the pianist on 15 big band and small group recordings including "In The Moment", "Live at MCG", the Grammy Award-winning "Homage to Count Basie", "Quality Time", "Latin in Manhattan", and "Big Band Trane".
Phil's notoriety as a composer came in the late 1970's when he was playing in a NYC club with legendary jazz harmonica player, Toots Thielemans As they were playing Phil's composition, "Sno' Peas", pianist Bill Evans walked in, loved the song, and asked Toots to bring it to their upcoming recording session. Evans' and Thielemans' subsequent recording of "Sno' Peas" on the classic Grammy-nominated album, "Affinity", put Markowitz on the map as a venerable jazz composer.
For the past 27 years Phil has been playing, touring, and recording with NEA saxophone master Dave Liebman. Phil has served as pianist, composer, and/or producer with the quintet on "New Vista", "Voyage", "Return of the Tenor", "Songs for My Daughter", "Miles Away", "Turn It Around”, and two duo albums, "But Beautiful" and "Manhattan Dialogues", which was recorded in Greenfield Hall at the Manhattan School of Music. The all-star group “Saxophone Summit” has released 4 recordings including "Gathering of the Spirits", “Seraphic Light”, “Visitation”, “Compassion- The Music of John Coltrane”, and tours regularly in the US and Europe.
Phil has been artist in residence in major conservatories and universities throughout the world including the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, the Stockholm Conservatory of Music, North Carolina School for the Arts, Oberlin Conservatory. His academic base is the Manhattan School of Music, where he is a professor in the graduate and doctoral divisions.
Phil has received endowments and multiple grants from The Howard Foundation, Chamber Music America-The Doris Duke Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts and The New York Foundation for the Arts.
Duke Ellington influenced millions of people both around the world and at home. He gave American music its own sound for the first time. In his fifty year career, he played over 20,000 performances in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East as well as Asia.
Simply put, Ellington transcends boundaries and fills the world with a treasure trove of music that renews itself through every generation of fans and music-lovers. His legacy continues to live onand will endure for generations to come. Winton Marsalis said it best when he said "His music sounds like America." Because of the unmatched artistic heights to which he soared, no one deserved the phrase “beyond category” more than Ellington, for it aptly describes his life as well. He was most certainly one of a kind that maintained a llifestyle with universal appeal which transcended countless boundaries.
Duke Ellington is best remembered for the over 3000 songs that he composed during his lifetime. His best known titles include; "It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing", "Sophisticated Lady", "Mood Indigo", “Solitude", "In a Mellotone",and "Satin Doll". The most amazing part about Ellington was the most creative while he was on the road. It was during this time when he wrote his most famous piece, "Mood Indigo"which brought him world wide fame.
When asked what inspired him to write, Ellington replied, "My men and my race are the inspiration of my work. I try to catch the character and mood and feeling of my people".
Duke Ellington's popular compositions set the bar for generations of brilliant jazz, pop, theatre and soundtrack composers to come. While these compositions guarantee his greatness, whatmakes Duke an iconoclastic genius, and an unparalleled visionary, what has granted him immortality are his extended suites. From 1943's Black, Brown and Beige to 1972's The Uwis Suite, Duke used the suite format to give his jazz songs a far more empowering meaning, resonance and purpose: to exalt, mythologize and re-contextualize the African-American experience on a grand scale.
Duke Ellington was partial to giving brief verbal accounts of the moods his songs captured. Reading those accounts is like looking deep into the background of an old photo of New York and noticing the lost and almost unaccountable details that gave the city its character during Ellington's heyday, which began in 1927 when his band made the Cotton Club its home.''The memory of things gone,'' Ellington once said, ''is important to a jazz musician,'' and the stories he sometimes told about his songs are the record of those things gone. But what is gone returns, its pulse kicking, when Ellington's music plays, and never mind what past it is, for the music itself still carries us forward today.
Duke Ellington was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1966. He was later awarded several other prizes, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969, and the Legion of Honor by France in 1973, the highest civilian honors in each country. He died of lung cancer and pneumonia on May 24, 1974, a month after his 75th birthday, and is buried in theBronx, in New York City. At his funeral attendedby over 12,000 people at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Ella Fitzgerald summed up the occasion, "It's a very sad day...A genius has passed."
“I called the great French violinist Jean-Luc Ponty and I said ‘So, who’s the new cat? Who’s got the stuff? And he said Zach Brock.”
— Stanley Clarke, virtuoso bassist & jazz legend
“…not only is he my favorite violinist in the world but he’s also one of my favorite musicians, period.”
— Michael League, founder/bassist of Snarky Puppy
Violinist Zach Brock is a sought-after soloist, sideman, and educator, as well as a multi Grammy Award-winning member of the contemporary jazz band Snarky Puppy. Born to a musical family in Lexington, KY, Zach began studying violin at the age of four and was performing publicly by the age of six. Zach’s improvisational skills were honed in the rich Chicago jazz scene while studying classical violin at Northwestern University. He released his debut album, Zach Brock & The Coffee Achievers, in 2003. Two years and two records later he was invited to perform at Carnegie Hall by trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas. Zach joined the band of legendary bassist Stanley Clarke in 2007 and that same year he relocated to Brooklyn. From 2010 to 2012 Zach led a chord-less trio of violin, bass and drums called The Magic Number and since 2012 he has released three albums on Criss Cross Jazz, as well as two co-led projects with renowned pianist Phil Markowitz. In 2017 Zach formed a new “chord-less” trio with Matt Ulery and Jon Deitemyer. Their collective 2019 album Wonderment garnered rave reviews and inclusion in the “Best of 2019” lists by Downbeat and Jazziz Magazines.
Zach is most widely recognized through his sixteen years of touring and recording with the genre-bending supergroup Snarky Puppy. Since his first appearance on Snarky’s 2008 on Bring Us The Bright, Zach has appeared on seven subsequent recordings including the 2017 Grammy Award-winning album Culcha Vulcha, 2019’s Immigrance, the 2021 Grammy Award-winning Live At The Royal Albert Hall, and the 2023 Grammy-award winning album Empire Central (to which he contributed his song “Honiara''). In February 2023 Zach performed with legendary guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel at the GroundUP Festival in Miami as part of Kurt’s Caipi Band. In November ‘23 GroundUP Records released Drawing Songs, the debut recording by “Brock, Lanzetti, Ogawa,” a new co-led trio with fellow Snarky Puppy members Bob Lanzetti and Keita Ogawa.
A passionate educator, Zach has coached hundreds of musicians through workshops for The 92nd Street Y and Carnegie Hall in NYC, masterclasses at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland and the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio, and as a five-year “Artist In Residence” at Temple University in Philadelphia.
His eleventh solo album, the Grammy-nominated Dirty Mindz featuring Eric Harland, Mark Lettieri, Justin Stanton, and Jonathan Maron, was released in 2022 on GroundUP Records. Zach's latest collaborative album with fellow Snarky Puppy bandmates Bob Lanzetti and Keita Ogawa, the Grammy-nominated album Drawing Songs, was released in November 2023.
Phil Markowitz, is forty year veteran of the International Jazz scene and is dedicated to realizing the full potential of improvisational music within the jazz idiom. He performs original compositions, which range from hard-cutting chromaticism to the most lyrical post-romantic ballads. Inventive, virtuostic, and accessible, Markowitz presents a forward-looking vision for contemporary music. His recordings as leader include “Perputity” on Dottime Records, “Catalysis” on Sunnyside Records, "Taxi Ride" (which features an incredible reunion with his lifelong friend, Toots Thielemans), "In the Woods", "Sno Peas", with Eddie Gomez and Al Foster and "Restless Dreams" (with vibraphonist Joe Locke).
Mr. Markowitz leads his own trio, and a quartet and duo with violinist Zach Brock, and is the pianist in the all-star group "Saxophone Summit" (David Liebman, Joe Lovano and Greg Osby and Billy Hart). His credentials span a cornucopia of jazz; from the traditional to the avant-garde; from his early associations with Chet Baker and Toots Thielemans, through his multi decade affiliations with Bob Mintzer and David Liebman.
In 1979, he joined Chet Baker's band. That four-year association yielded such recordings as "Broken Wing", "Live at Nick's Place", "Two A Day", and "Live at Chateauvalion". Phil has also performed and/or recorded with Mel Lewis, Marion McPartland, Phil Woods, Ravi Coltrane, Michael Brecker, Lionel Hampton, Nick Brignola, Joe Chambers, Miroslav Vitous, and Joe Williams. Phil has a long association with Bob Mintzer and was the pianist on 15 big band and small group recordings including "In The Moment", "Live at MCG", the Grammy Award-winning "Homage to Count Basie", "Quality Time", "Latin in Manhattan", and "Big Band Trane".
Phil's notoriety as a composer came in the late 1970's when he was playing in a NYC club with legendary jazz harmonica player, Toots Thielemans As they were playing Phil's composition, "Sno' Peas", pianist Bill Evans walked in, loved the song, and asked Toots to bring it to their upcoming recording session. Evans' and Thielemans' subsequent recording of "Sno' Peas" on the classic Grammy-nominated album, "Affinity", put Markowitz on the map as a venerable jazz composer.
For the past 27 years Phil has been playing, touring, and recording with NEA saxophone master Dave Liebman. Phil has served as pianist, composer, and/or producer with the quintet on "New Vista", "Voyage", "Return of the Tenor", "Songs for My Daughter", "Miles Away", "Turn It Around”, and two duo albums, "But Beautiful" and "Manhattan Dialogues", which was recorded in Greenfield Hall at the Manhattan School of Music. The all-star group “Saxophone Summit” has released 4 recordings including "Gathering of the Spirits", “Seraphic Light”, “Visitation”, “Compassion- The Music of John Coltrane”, and tours regularly in the US and Europe.
Phil has been artist in residence in major conservatories and universities throughout the world including the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, the Stockholm Conservatory of Music, North Carolina School for the Arts, Oberlin Conservatory. His academic base is the Manhattan School of Music, where he is a professor in the graduate and doctoral divisions.
Phil has received endowments and multiple grants from The Howard Foundation, Chamber Music America-The Doris Duke Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts and The New York Foundation for the Arts.
... Melancholic and wistful.
Jazzthing, 26-8-2025
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