Josh Rawlings Trio CD Release
J&J Music and Broken Time Records are proud to announce the release of the Josh Rawlings Trio CD Climbing Stairs and CD Release concert at Bake’s Place in Issaquah. The concert and CD feature all original music composed by Seattle rising star Josh Rawlings. The show promises to be an intimate and inspired night with The Trio as they celebrate 6 years of playing together.
“The Trio tip-toes beyond everyday jazz and swirls up a batch of inspiration and joy for living life.” – Josh Rawlings
The Josh Rawlings Trio explores the sounds of what they call “joyful jazz.” They specialize in the spontaneous creation of compelling and exciting music with a wide-ranging repertoire, from original compositions to timeless jazz standards and arrangements of video game themes and more. Their music is light and upbeat, solid and mature, and carries a real sense of the emerging jazz voice from the next generation of players. Each member brings a vitality and youthful spirit to the music that sends audience members away exhilarated and delighted. The group features acclaimed songwriter and pianist Josh Rawlings, upright bassist Nate Omdal and drummer Adam Kessler, all graduates of Seattle’s renowned Cornish College of the Arts. The Trio found great inspiration learning from and performing with their professors; Denney Goodhew, Julian Priester, Randy Halberstadt, Chuck Deardorf and Mark Ivestor among others. They worked extensively with Goodhew in his latest project, The Qhromatics. That group fueled a matured sensitivity and focused interplay now exhibited by The Trio on every stage they perform.
The Trio has recently been seen playing sold out performances at the Triple Door, Bite of Seattle, Taste of Tacoma, Out to Lunch and the Pike Place Market music festivals. They have been featured at parties and galas for Cornish and with Seattle celebrities such as Paul Allen, Bill Gates and Mayor Greg Nichols.
The group’s début album Climbing Stairs is available on Seattle’s Broken Time Records. The CD exhibits the breadth of the Trio’s playing and conjures up a myriad of influences and emotions. From the burning, Monk-like Bebop of “Acquittal” to the Abdullah Ibrahim-inspired title track “Climbing Stairs”, the CD gets toes tapping and spirits swinging hard! The Trio anticipates going back into the studio in the fall of 2008 to record arrangements of video game themes and a recording of jazz standards.
Door open at 6:00pm and show times are 7:45 & 9:00pm. Dinner and show reservations are $44.50. This is a private show so please contact J&J Music at 206.250.5457 or jandj@jandjmusic.net for reservations.
Where: Bake's Place
Price: $44.50
When: 6:00pm Fri 10.17.08
Who:
This Event Submitted By: J&J Music
Share This
Loading Map...
Bake's Place
4135 Providence Point Dr. Southeast
Issaquah, WA 98029
- Phone: 425-391-3335
- Web: http://www.bakesplace.org
- Get personalized recommendations based on your favorite performers.
- Receive a weekly email update with events that are of interest to you.
- Share your opinions about events, artists, and venues.
User Comments and Reviews
1 Comment. Add Your Comments
Josh Rawlings Trio CD Release
Music: Jazz
Comment by: Rachel Dovey
Josh Rawlings Trio’s Brilliant Fun
It’s a tough skill for any classically trained artist; turning intellectual knowledge into entertainment. For writers it’s that need to work the words “deconstruction” and “postmodern” into the puff piece; for jazz musicians it manifests as intricate, perfectly timed pieces played lifelessly to a bored audience.
This is not the case with Josh Rawlings Trio.
Yes, the trio, composed of Josh Rawlings (Piano) Nate Omdal (Bass) Adam Kessler (Drums) are all recent Cornish Grads. Yes, brilliant bebop master (and their former professor) Hadley Caliman sat in the front row at their CD release Friday evening at Bake’s Place in Issaquah. Yes, “Aquital,” is a bebop tune composed as an overlay to Thelonius Monk’s piece of the same name soaked in complex chords and abrupt hesitations.
But the trio, which has been playing together for seven years now, manages to tie together fun with intellectual prowess. It would be easy to say that this comes from their wacky onstage charisma. Rawlings alternately pounds on the keys with Tori Amos-grade intensity and sits back lightly strumming with the nonchalance of a professional. Omdal wraps his lanky body around his gigantic base as his face contorts into every overly-animated expression imaginable with the rise and fall of the notes. Kessler’s animated body exudes pure rhythm as he pounds, taps and brushes out the backbone of each tune.
But it’s more than that. Maybe it comes from oddly-placed pieces of weirdness: the Skerik approach. Sure, anecdotes about flossing, long boards and Weezer glasses and lengthy discussions of spirit animals are diverting. And occasional sqwaks, snorts and roars during title track “Climbing Stairs” add to the fun, but they aren’t used enough to either become integral to the body of the music or become a cheesy gimmick. They simply add to a charm that already exists.
The bottom line is that their pieces run the jazz gamut, from bebop to Billie Holiday to funk and blues, each with a steady backbone of keys and drums and delightful base melodies encircling the other instruments, and an uncanny manner of intuitive playing that can only come from jamming for so long. They’re an excellent group of musicians and they’re having fun. Perhaps, as an audience, that’s all the entertainment you need.
Nothing postmodern about it.