When: Friday, January 14, 2011 • Where: Black Dog Coffee and Wine Bar • Who: Pat Moriarty, alto saxophone; Phil Hey, drums and percussion
In my head, I get that improvisation is a combination of musical knowledge and technical virtuosity, choice-making and risk-taking, listening and responding, playing and waiting, starting and stopping, and spontaneous composition, all in real time that speeds up for some and slows down for others.
In my heart, I think it’s magic.
In my heart, I think it’s magic.
Last night at the Black Dog in St. Paul during a snowstorm, saxophonist Pat Moriarty and drummer Phil Hey made magic, although they hadn't played together as a duo in many years.
They met in the mid-1970s and recorded one album, Let Them All Come, released in 1978 and known among those in the know. Writing for the Strib, Tom Surowicz called it "one of those 'private label' collector's albums that show up for big bucks on e-Bay." The cover, designed by St. Paul classical composer and trombonist Homer Lambrecht, appears in Freedom, Rhythm, and Sound: Revolutionary Jazz Original Cover Art 1965–83, compiled by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker, published by Soul Jazz Records Publishing in London. (Side note: Peterson is the guy who signed Jose James to his first record deal.) Pat still has copies available in the original shrink wrap; in his words, “some of them may be playable.”
They met in the mid-1970s and recorded one album, Let Them All Come, released in 1978 and known among those in the know. Writing for the Strib, Tom Surowicz called it "one of those 'private label' collector's albums that show up for big bucks on e-Bay." The cover, designed by St. Paul classical composer and trombonist Homer Lambrecht, appears in Freedom, Rhythm, and Sound: Revolutionary Jazz Original Cover Art 1965–83, compiled by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker, published by Soul Jazz Records Publishing in London. (Side note: Peterson is the guy who signed Jose James to his first record deal.) Pat still has copies available in the original shrink wrap; in his words, “some of them may be playable.”
