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Tuesday, February 1, 2022
7:30 PM
The series begins on February 1 with a rare US date by Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel, joined by two of the top players in jazz, bassist Scott Colley and drummer Brian Blade. Muthspiel lives in Vienna and is considered one of the most influential guitarists of his generation. After studying at the New England Conservatory and the Berklee College of Music in Boston, he toured with the Gary Burton Quintet, establishing a wide reputation on the jazz scene. His recordings as a leader on the ECM Record label have featured collaborations with Ralph Towner, Brad Mehldau, Ambrose Akinmusire, and Larry Grenadier. He has also been a regularly sought-after sideman for artists such as Dave Liebman, Peter Erskine, Paul Motian, Gary Peacock, John Patitucci, and many more. Muthspiel’s latest album, Angular Blues, with Scott Colley and Brian Blade, was released in the spring of 2020. The Times (London) wrote, “…moods shift from sunny and pastoral through the sharper edges of the title track... The three play with a relaxed precision that comes from long hours at the bandstand together… an exercise in fine-spun lyricism with echoes of Scarlatti and Bach … a quietly impressive album.”
Wolfgang Muthspiel Trio
Wolfgang Muthspiel, guitar
Scott Colley, bass
Brian Blade, drums
The guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel lives in Vienna and is considered one of the most influential guitarists of his generation. After being classically trained on the violin, he discovered his love for guitar at the age of 15. An interest in both his own and improvised music eventually led him to focus on jazz. After studying with Mick Goodrick at the New England Conservatory and then later at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, he toured with the Gary Burton Quintet for two years, establishing an excellent reputation in the jazz scene. Starting in the mid-1990s, he lived and worked in the jazz capital of New York. He ventured into the world of pop music with the singer Rebekka Bakken, while also pursuing the electronic project Muthspiel/Muthspiel with his brother. He has also been a regularly sought-after sideman for artists such as Trilok Gurtu, Dhafer Youssef, Youssou N’Dour, Maria Joao, Dave Liebman, Peter Erskine, Paul Motian, Bob Berg, Gary Peacock, Don Alias, Larry Grenadier, John Patitucci, Dieter Ilg, the Vienna Art Orchestra, and many more.
In 2000, he founded the Material Records label, which has released numerous recordings of artists in an international format. After a European tour with his new quartet (2008) and the duo project Friendly Travelers, in collaboration with the drummer Brian Blade (2008), Muthspiel devoted himself more and more to the trio MGT (Muthspiel – Grigoryan – Towner), which, after several concert tours, released the highly acclaimed debut album From a Dream. In addition, he has composed pieces for various ensembles, such as the Klangforum Wien and, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Joseph Haydn’s death in 2009, a commissioned work for the Esterhazy Foundation. He has produced recordings of young musicians, and since 2004, he has led the guitar programme of the Basel University of Music FHNW.
In 2017, Muthspiel founded the Focus Year program at the Jazzcampus Basel and has since been artistic director of this globally unique year-long programme of intensive musical exploration.
In June 2012, the recording of the project Vienna Naked, a song programme composed by Muthspiel for guitar and voice, was released.
Muthspiel made his debut with MGT in 2013 with the album Travel Guide on the renowned Munich label ECM. In 2014, he made his debut as a band leader at ECM. The trio recording Driftwood with Brian Blade and Larry Grenadier garnered huge critical praise and in 2014, Muthspiel was given a contract for his own concert series at the Konzerthaus Wien. The Vienna World project was followed by another vocal recording in 2015, for which he performed and recorded with eighteen musicians in Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, New York, Sweden and Vienna.
Rising Grace was released on ECM Records in autumn 2016. This quintet recording with Brad Mehldau, Ambrose Akinmusire, Brian Blade and Larry Grenadier adorned many of the bestof lists of 2016, was given five out of five stars by DownBeat magazine, and led to the Wolfgang Muthspiel Quintet playing numerous sold-out concerts worldwide. In 2018, the quintet performed and recorded Where The River Goes, with Eric Harland on drums, which led to many more performances and concerts.
The Wolfgang Muthspiel Large Ensemble was launched in 2019, which led to a programme consisting of pieces by Muthspiel in new arrangements by Guillermo Klein the following year. The 19-member ensemble combined European jazz legends with virtuoso representatives of chamber music, and toured and performed in the autumn of the same year in the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie and the Wiener Konzerthaus, among others.
Recorded during a joint tour of Japan in 2018 with Scott Colley and Brian Blade, the trio album Angular Blues was released in the spring of 2020. Planned US and EU concerts have been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Muthspiel’s numerous awards include the Hans Koller Prize for Musician of the Year and the award for European Jazz Musician of the Year 2003. In addition, Musicians magazine has selected him as one of the “top 10 jazz guitarists of the world.”
In 2021 he received the German Jazz Prize in the Category “String Instruments International“.
Scott Colley’s stature as a leading bassist in the field of improvised music is well known, and easily measured. He’s been called “one of the leading bassists of our postbop era, and a composer-bandleader of quietly serious resolve” by The New York Times, while musical colleagues, like saxophonist Joshua Redman, praise him for being “one of the most musical bassists playing today. To me, he seems to have…this natural, intuitive, empathic sense of how to bring the most out of the other musicians and the music he’s playing.”
Colley, a four time Grammy nominee, has performed on over 200 recordings, eight of those as bandleader and composer. He is a first-call sideman, as renowned for his role in groups led by well-known headliners—John Scofield, Herbie Hancock, Chris Potter, many others—as he is for being part of all-star projects like “Still Dreaming” with Joshua Redman, Ron Miles, and Brian Blade; and “Steel House” with Edward Simon and Brian Blade.
Significantly, Colley is a leader of note, having assembled and composed music for a number of his own ensembles of top-level talent. His new recording Seven benefits from the combined prowess of Colley alongside trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, keyboardist/singer Kevin Hays, and drummer Nate Smith. The recording serves as an earnest, effective example of the personal and the musical becoming one, and is dedicated to a number of important mentors who have passed away recently, including Andrew Hill, Michael Brecker, Jim Hall, Charlie Haden, Fred Tinsley and Colley’s father.
Colley’s musical journey began in his hometown of Los Angeles. He was born in 1963 where at the ripe age of 11 he set his sights on the bass as his instrument of choice. At 13, he began studying with bassist Monty Budwig, and later, attending Eagle Rock High School, with John Rinaldo the school’s musical director. A full scholarship to the California Institute for the Arts (CalArts) greeted him after graduation. He focused on composition and jazz studies, while also studying privately with jazz legend Charlie Haden and classical bassist Fred Tinsley of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Even before graduating Cal Arts, Colley’s reputation began to spread and he was tapped to tour and record with famed singer Carmen McRae in 1986; two years later, he graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree, moved to New York City, and toured further with McRae, and such headliners as Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford Jordan, Jim Hall, John Scofield, Joe Henderson and Art Farmer. By the late ‘90s, he added stints with groups led by Joe Lovano, Toots Thielemans, Bobby Hutcherson, and Bob Berg to his resume, as well as extensive touring with Andrew Hill's "Another Point of Departure" sextet.
The first decade of the new millennium—from 2000 to ‘10—saw Colley become a major player with international recognition, touring extensively as a member of Herbie Hancock’s working trio and a quartet with Bobby Hutcherson for five years, while continuing work in Andrew Hill’s trio and sextet, as well as the Chris Potter Quartet. In 2005, he joined “Directions in Music”, a collaboration with Michael Brecker, Herbie Hancock, and Terri Lyne Carrington; performed in Pat Metheny’s acclaimed Trio; and took on teaching residencies globally.
It was during this period that Colley also stepped out as a leader and composer in his own right, recording and releasing five critically hailed albums in a seven-year run. His debut Portable Universe (1997), featuring a sextet that featured Potter and David Binney, was welcomed by the L.A. Times for “present[ing] an involved, emotional musical vision of contemporary life”, and “marks him as a bandleader from which to expect great things.”
Subliminal, a quartet outing from 1998 (which JazzTimes praised for “gripping originals…at once appealing and challenging”) and two trio releases with Potter and Bill Stewart from 2000—This Place and The Magic Line, soon followed. In 2003, he released Initial Wisdom featuring a quartet with Ravi Coltrane, Adam Rogers, and Stewart. A few years later, Colley’s reputation for capturing both improvisational moments of magic and sentimental precision was secured in recordings like 2007’s Architect of The Silent Moment (featuring Ralph Alessi, Craig Taborn and various special guests) and 2010’s Empire (a quintet recording with Alessi, Taborn, Bill Frisell, and Brian Blade that No Treble called a “front runner for jazz record of the year”). As Colley told All About Jazz in 2015, allowing for the extemporaneous and the unplanned is a leading imperative in his approach to recording.
That idea of embracing the unknown, of searching for the unexpected, stands as a career-defining aspect of Colley’s musical path—one that continues to balance his role as a leader and a band member, as a creative collaborator and as one following where the music itself leads. One can hear that in his work as a still high-demand sideman in the most recent decade of his ever-ascending and continuously expanding career, performing and recording with groups led by Potter, Scofield, Metheny, Donny McCaslin, Gary Burton, Luciana Souza, Kenny Werner, Edward Simon. One can also hear it in such recent collaborations as the KCB Collective, with Danish Saxophonist Benjamin Koppel and Blade, the trio “Steel House”, and now with his current quartet.
It can be argued that Colley’s sense of creative priorities distinguishes itself most in his role as leader and composer. “I’ve always been more interested in writing music that doesn’t necessarily seem like a bass player’s record and so my role in the music doesn’t really change much whether it’s my compositions or someone else’s. To me, that’s an interesting balance: to be decisive and solid and create music that has direction, but in the process of playing the music, to step back and not control every event. That’s what brings the space and the beauty but also brings the power.”
Drummer Brian Blade was born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana. The first music he experienced was the Gospel and songs of praise at the Zion Baptist Church where his father, Brady L. Blade, Sr., has been Pastor since 1961. In elementary school, music appreciation classes were an important part of his development and at age nine, he began playing the violin. Inspired by his older brother, Brady L. Blade, Jr., who had been the drummer at Zion Baptist Church, Brian shifted his focus to the drums throughout middle and high school.
During high school, while studying with Dorsey Summerfield, Jr., Brian began listening to the music of John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Thelonious Monk, Elvin Jones and Joni Mitchell. By the age of eighteen, Brian moved to New Orleans to attend Loyola University. From 1988 through 1993, Brian was able to study and play with most of the master musicians living in New Orleans, such as: John Vidacovich, Ellis Marsalis, Steve Masakowski, Bill Huntington, Mike Pellera, John Mahoney, George French, Emile Vinette, Germaine Bazzle, David Lee, Jr., Alvin Red Tyler, Tony Dagradi and Harold Battiste.
In 1997, Brian Blade formed The Fellowship Band with pianist Jon Cowherd. The band members are bassist Chris Thomas, saxophonists Myron Walden and Melvin Butler. The Fellowship Band has released five recordings, beginning with their debut in 1998, Perceptual in 2000, Season of Changes in 2008, Landmarks in 2014 and Body And Shadow in 2017.
While continuing to work with The Fellowship Band, Blade has been a member of the Wayne Shorter quartet since 2000. He has recorded with Daniel Lanois, Joni Mitchell, Kenny Garrett, Ellis Marsalis, Chick Corea, Marianne Faithfull, Norah Jones, Emmylou Harris and Bob Dylan.
The concerts will be in person at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library. There are no physical tickets for these events. Your name will be on an attendee list at the front door. Doors open at 7 p.m. Seating is first-come; first-served. These events will be presented in compliance with State of California and County of San Diego health regulations as applicable at the time of each concert. Face coverings are required for attendees, regardless of vaccination status. Proof of vaccination or negative test within 48 hours of the event is required. Event capacity is limited to 70% for now.