Trombonist/Composer Joe Fiedler and his New Quartet to release new recording Will Be Fire #jazz

Joe Fiedler/Trombone & Electronics Pete McCann/Guitar Marcus Rojas/Tuba Jeff Davis/Drums RELEASE DATE: November 17th, 2023

About Will Be Fire: How to decipher Will Be Fire, the title of this exploratory, raw, practically booty-shaking release by master trombonist Joe Fiedler and his New Quartet? The phrase is broken English, from the mouth of an athlete discussing the need to step it up, to bring one’s A-game. That’s more easily done when your partners are electric guitar slinger Pete McCann, veteran tuba virtuoso Marcus Rojas and responsive, beat-conjuring drummer Jeff Davis. Using this instrumentation — with tuba in what is typically the bass role — Fiedler seeks to capture a spirit present in the late Arthur Blythe’s Columbia releases of the late ’70s and early ’80s: Lenox Avenue Breakdown, Illusions and Blythe Spirit. “What really inspired me was the incredible elasticity of the group interplay,” Fiedler says. “But most of all it’s the orchestration, with drums, tuba and electric guitar as the foundation — amazing!” Heightening the spice and bite of Will Be Fire, for the first time in Fiedler’s recorded output, is a Line 6 effects unit on the trombone, giving melodic themes and solo lines an abiding sonic nastiness. The choice isn’t out of the blue — it’s a logical step for Fiedler in a long process of experimentation with timbre, mainly through varied use of mutes and multiphonic extended techniques. “On ‘Squirrel Hill’ I’m using multiphonics and effects and I love that, so to be continued,” Fiedler says. “I felt it was time to push forward in finding avenues for sonic diversity. I’ve been struck recently by how codified the modern jazz trombone has become. I wanted something new, both for the trombone and the ensemble, something that didn’t really sound like anything else. Along with the electronics, I also consciously tried to incorporate techniques and textures I’ve been using for years in more open settings, such as ‘against the grain’ playing pioneered by Roswell Rudd, into a more mainstream setting.” Marcus Rojas holds the tuba seat in Fiedler’s unique low brass quartet Big Sackbut, heard on Joe Fiedler’s Big Sackbut, Sackbut Stomp and Live in Graz. “What really makes Marcus special,” Fiedler contends, “is his ability to groove, comp and solo, all with a warm and absolutely gorgeous tone.” Rojas in this regard is a direct heir of Bob Stewart, who played tuba on those Arthur Blythe records and many others. Rojas also subbed for Stewart in Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy. Henry Threadgill, who employed Rojas in Very Very Circus, characterizes the tuba as follows in his memoir Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music: “… an instrument capable of darting around among the sections and thereby linking the parts of the ensemble. The tuba has what I’d describe as a quicker response time than the bass: it can jump right into a new section and fit. It can move in and out among the other instruments like a ghost. But it can take center stage, too.” That’s uncannily apt as a description of what Rojas achieves with Fiedler on Will Be Fire. Bouncing off Rojas’ multifaceted presence is Pete McCann, a close colleague of Fiedler’s for some 30 years. He’s cut from a different cloth than James “Blood” Ulmer, Arthur Blythe’s guitarist of choice, and a hugely compelling if underrated player in his own right. Driving rhythm guitar, stylistic flourishes in the right places, the mix of wet and dry sounds, clean and dirty sounds — one can understand Fiedler declaring: “Pete is the best, period. Seriously, he should be a superstar. I don’t think there’s another guitarist who can cover as much musical territory. Straightahead, funk, rock, avant-garde, you name it, he is such a master soloist and accompanist in all situations. Marcus had never played with Pete before, and the day after the sessions he called to say how completely blown away he was by ‘how deep Pete was in it!’” For many years, Jeff Davis has been the first-call drum sub for Fiedler’s Open Sesame band and for the longstanding trio with John Hébert and Michael Sarin. “I’ve been wanting to use Jeff as the primary guy on one of my projects,” Fiedler says. “He has a great pocket but with an open sensibility, and as I was composing this music it just screamed, ‘Hire Jeff!’ He’s very present but never overplays, which is critical with someone like Marcus, who needs enough space to have multiple avenues into the groove. Jeff is the perfect complement to that.” Into this sonic pool jumps Fiedler with his Line 6 Pod Go unit, creating a variety of expressive overdriven tones, consistently pushing the envelope on his horn — though in a manner completely different from his 2022 solo trombone tour de force The Howland Sessions. He makes use of four different effects patches: distortion with a touch of wah for “Squirrel Hill,” “Graffiti’s,” “Crooked” and the title track; fuzz with reverb/delay and rolled-off treble for “Merger” and “How’s Skippy”; phase shifter with delay on the two moodier pieces, “Song for Coop” and “W 21st St.”; and distortion with modulation and reverb on “Peek Power Box.” The effects patches are a work in progress, and Fiedler readily admits being a novice in the arena. It goes to show that musical growth is constant — even for a seasoned big band section man, associate musical director of Sesame Street, orchestrator for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s movie In the Heights, veteran of the salsa circuit with Celia Cruz and Eddie Palmieri and many others, pop session ace with the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Wyclef Jean, and the list goes on. Fiedler’s eagerness to stretch beyond the familiar is evident throughout his catalogue, and certainly on Will Be Fire. At the heart of it all is fun — searching, deeply musical fun, not to mention straight-up funk. The two are closely interlinked. Here’s to more of it.

About Joe Fiedler: The New York Times has pinpointed a “feeling for a rugged but jaunty experimentalism” in the music of trombone veteran Joe Fiedler, a figure as esteemed in New York jazz circles as he is in the Afro-Caribbean and pop scenes. He’s an adventurous improviser and bandleader whose recordings range from solo trombone (The Howland Sessions) to quintet (Like, Strange) to trombone/tuba quartet (Big Sackbut, Sackbut Stomp, Live in Graz — “the intersection of gutbucket blues and avant-garde audacity,” JazzTimes) to chordless trio (The Crab, Sacred Chrome Orb, I’m In, Joe Fiedler Plays the Music of Albert Mangelsdorff).   Fiedler’s two Sesame Street-themed albums to date, Open Sesame and Fuzzy and Blue, pay homage to the beloved children’s show where Fiedler has worked as a music director for nearly 15 years. With bold and inventive arrangements of timeless music by Joe Raposo, Jeffrey Moss and more, Fiedler grapples with the legacy of the storied show of which he’s become an integral part. Fuzzy and Blue, opined London Jazz News, is “unnervingly satisfying — hitting a note between scripted nostalgia and improvised jazz that [is] both exciting and comforting at the same time.”   Owing to his long experience in pit bands, salsa groups and countless other professional settings, Fiedler had the opportunity to play trombone for the earliest onstage incarnation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights (not long before Hamilton’s runaway success). Tony Award-winning orchestrator Bill Sherman was on the gig and took to Fiedler, bringing him on board the newly revived children’s show Electric Company. After three seasons, Sherman and Fiedler made the transition in 2009 to Sesame Street. From playing 350 gigs a year on the freelance circuit, Fiedler officially became a Sesame Street music director, working on what would become hundreds of song arrangements and thousands of underscoring cues (and still climbing).   A Pittsburgh native and a New Yorker since 1993, Fiedler studied at Allegheny College and the University of Pittsburgh before launching into work as an in-demand sideman. He’s become one of the first-call trombonists in the world, featured on more than 100 recordings. He’s had extensive experience in the heart of the flowering big band scene, playing with Maria Schneider, Chico O’Farrill, the Mingus Big Band, Andrew Hill, Jason Lindner, Dafnis Prieto, Kenny Wheeler, Satoko Fujii, Miguel Zenón and many more. In smaller units he’s played with Lee Konitz, Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, Myra Melford, Bobby Previte, David Weiss’s Endangered Species and a host of others. Fiedler also paid years of dues on the salsa and Latin circuit with Celia Cruz, Eddie Palmieri, Willie Colon, Ralph Irizarry and other major acts. His pop credits include Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, Wyclef Jean, The Four Tops, Melba Moore and Lesley Gore, to name a few.   Without doubt this mass of musical experience filters into the trombonist’s mindset, the way he looks at craft, audience, band dynamics and perhaps most of all fun. Coming up in the ’80s, he recalls his favorite bands as the Jazz Passengers, Carla Bley, Ray Anderson — “bands and musicians that had this sense of humor, this sense of burlesque,” he says. Recalling the last great gasps of the downtown scene and his brushes with the early Knitting Factory bands, Fiedler knows that while many of those touchstones have disappeared, they live on still in today’s sensibilities and methods, for Fiedler as for many likeminded peers.   Fiedler’s work has always involved effortlessly hopping the boundary between charged free improvisation and music of more established tonal and formal parameters — “out” vs. “in,” as jazz musicians sometimes call it. He’s apt to draw out long and lustrous melodic tones while also manipulating his trombone sound with multiphonics and other extended techniques (playing one note and singing a higher note, sometimes producing an overtone to complete a chord). The deep sense of blues, tailgate and other earlier jazz approaches to the horn come through, as do the sonic innovations of Albert Mangelsdorff, or the hard-bop aesthetics of Slide Hampton and J.J. Johnson. As Jazz Podium wrote of his formidable solo trombone recital The Howland Sessions: “Fiedler manages to trump the master (Mangelsdorff): his chords are even broader, more colorful and more opulent.” Binding myriad influences into a signature voice, Fiedler continues to amass a reputation as a musical thinker with limitless imagination.

Please visit the Joe Fiedler website: www.joefiedler.com

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