Noah Preminger
Zigsaw
Album · Jazz · 2019
Zigsaw was one of three Noah Preminger releases in 2019—After Life and the vinyl-only Preminger Plays Preminger being the others—but it’s surely the most unusual, a single nearly hour-long composition written by Steve Lampert specifically for the Brooklyn-based Preminger and his band to perform. A trumpeter and musical sage from an older generation, Lampert created a piece that both challenged his young friend and captured something of his essence.
Lampert details the structure in his liner notes, but to sum up: Zigsaw is organized around something you could almost call a dance hook—an enormously challenging, tightly woven unison line against a funky beat that returns and returns, framing each of the band’s improvised episodes in different ways. There’s an acoustic core to their sound, a rootedness in swing and the risk-taking spirit of free jazz in the playing of Preminger, alto saxophonist John O’Gallagher, trumpeter Jason Palmer, pianist Kris Davis, bassist Kim Cass, and drummer Rudy Royston. But Rob Schwimmer’s Haken Continuum, a most uncommon kind of synthesizer, bathes the music in ethereal electronic beauty and adds harmonic and textural elements unlike anything in Preminger’s output to date.
Lampert details the structure in his liner notes, but to sum up: Zigsaw is organized around something you could almost call a dance hook—an enormously challenging, tightly woven unison line against a funky beat that returns and returns, framing each of the band’s improvised episodes in different ways. There’s an acoustic core to their sound, a rootedness in swing and the risk-taking spirit of free jazz in the playing of Preminger, alto saxophonist John O’Gallagher, trumpeter Jason Palmer, pianist Kris Davis, bassist Kim Cass, and drummer Rudy Royston. But Rob Schwimmer’s Haken Continuum, a most uncommon kind of synthesizer, bathes the music in ethereal electronic beauty and adds harmonic and textural elements unlike anything in Preminger’s output to date.
Zigsaw
Noah Preminger
Zigsaw was one of three Noah Preminger releases in 2019—After Life and the vinyl-only Preminger Plays Preminger being the others—but it’s surely the most unusual, a single nearly hour-long composition written by Steve Lampert specifically for the Brooklyn-based Preminger and his band to perform. A trumpeter and musical sage from an older generation, Lampert created a piece that both challenged his young friend and captured something of his essence.
Lampert details the structure in his liner notes, but to sum up: Zigsaw is organized around something you could almost call a dance hook—an enormously challenging, tightly woven unison line against a funky beat that returns and returns, framing each of the band’s improvised episodes in different ways. There’s an acoustic core to their sound, a rootedness in swing and the risk-taking spirit of free jazz in the playing of Preminger, alto saxophonist John O’Gallagher, trumpeter Jason Palmer, pianist Kris Davis, bassist Kim Cass, and drummer Rudy Royston. But Rob Schwimmer’s Haken Continuum, a most uncommon kind of synthesizer, bathes the music in ethereal electronic beauty and adds harmonic and textural elements unlike anything in Preminger’s output to date.
Lampert details the structure in his liner notes, but to sum up: Zigsaw is organized around something you could almost call a dance hook—an enormously challenging, tightly woven unison line against a funky beat that returns and returns, framing each of the band’s improvised episodes in different ways. There’s an acoustic core to their sound, a rootedness in swing and the risk-taking spirit of free jazz in the playing of Preminger, alto saxophonist John O’Gallagher, trumpeter Jason Palmer, pianist Kris Davis, bassist Kim Cass, and drummer Rudy Royston. But Rob Schwimmer’s Haken Continuum, a most uncommon kind of synthesizer, bathes the music in ethereal electronic beauty and adds harmonic and textural elements unlike anything in Preminger’s output to date.
