The Mara Rosenbloom Trio
Mara Rosenbloom Piano & Composition Sean Conly Bass Chad Taylor Drums
Kicking off 2020 The Mara Rosenbloom Trio received Chamber Music America's Performance Plus Grant, with the support of The New York Community Trust & The Doris Duke Foundation. This grant offered the trio the opportunity to engage in 6 sessions with the legendary Amina Claudine Myers, to workshop music for a new "demo." The results were then picked up by Barcelona record label Fresh Sound/New Talent, resulting in the trio's second album release RESPIRATION, which drops internationally October 23, 2020!
“For many years I’ve been thinking about the incredible connection humans share in the instant of each breath we take - although I had no idea how increasingly urgent this awareness would become amidst the global pandemic & voices of the victims of racial violence,” says Rosenbloom.
“Every moment, I breathe in the same atmosphere that someone else has just breathed out, filter it through my body, and leave the result for the next person; my future depends on someone else’s past, and what I leave behind will be someone else’s future. On the most basic level, every breath is vital to my life, and every instant connects me to the life of others. To process this idea is to know deeply, that we humans must care for each other. With this record, like every record I’ve made preceding it, if I inspire anyone to come into this awareness, to put this caring out front, then I have succeeded.”
Rosenbloom's debut trio album Prairie Burn (Fresh Sound/New Talent) - is a suite that focuses more closely on intensely collaborative improvisation, inspired by the drama and ecology at the edge of the Great Plains where the Wisconsin-born Rosenbloom spent her formative years. Recorded in a single four-hour session at legendary Brooklyn studio Systems Two, it captures the spontaneity and intuitive interplay of Rosenbloom's trio with bassist Sean Conly and drummer Chad Taylor, who honed this material in concert over the course of a full year.
Rosenbloom compares the ecosystem of her prairie upbringing to the creative vibrancy of jazz improvisation and the vibrant inner workings of her trio: “I learned to appreciate the balance and constant buzz of a dense and diverse habitat sitting week after week in the prairie near my house. It was a place so busy with life, you could feel alone in the center of it all, and yet, a place so fascinating, eventually you couldn’t help but be pulled into its cycles,” she explains. “For the Prairie Burn set, I tried to compose a habitat: a series of pieces we could move through without stops, ideas that could grow side by side, or crowded one over another, a cycle in motion.”
The result is a fearless, unbridled, often feral yet extremely intimate and highly improvised performance. “Letting go of the written page is only letting go of the surface level. If we stay truly present and open, the vital elements, the intent, the emotion, how we each express ourselves individually, cannot be lost,” Rosenbloom affirms. “Deep roots will hold.”
“ONE OF THE TEN BEST JAZZ ALBUMS OF THE YEAR!” -LUCIDCULTURE
****4 ½ STARS! - DOWNBEAT
"...a trio recording of bristling provocation and full-bore group improvising...her strongest statement as a bandleader and her most dauntless effort as a pianist." GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO, THE NEW YORK TIMES
"The [Mara Rosenbloom] trio achieves an elusive chemistry and degree of spontaneous interaction that transcends mental boundaries." PETER MARGASAK, THE CHICAGO READER
“PUNK ROCK ENERGY…” – MIDWEST JAZZ RECORD
“"[Rosenbloom's] quantum leap into greatness. An absolutely feral, largely improvisational suite...unbridled ferocity and a remarkable chemistry...a true trio effort" - NEW YORK MUSIC DAILY
“…Midwest-cum-Borough scorcher and hopefully will help place Rosenbloom’s music centrally on the map.” - CLIFFORD ALLEN - THE NYC JAZZ RECORD
"...Rosenbloom has a probing and watchful style as an improviser, building cycles of implication and digression. Her trio, which pairs [Chad] Taylor with bassist Sean Conly, knows how to follow her lead; it's a band best experienced in long stretches, with undivided attention." - NATE CHINEN, WBGO (review of live performance at NYC Winter Jazzfest, Jan 2018).
FLYWAYS
Mara Rosenbloom Piano & Composition Anaïs Maviel Voice & Surdo Drum Rashaan Carter Bass
Rosenbloom's newest ensemble, Flyways, features 2019 Van Lier Fellowship winner Anaïs Maviel (voice & surdo drum) & acclaimed bassist Rashaan Carter (Wallace Roney, Marc Cary, Cindy Blackman). The group's premier work, "I know what I dreamed" sets the text of one of Adrienne Rich's 21 Love Poems to melody, and extends it into a set length work, balancing composed narrative within a dynamic level of improvisation. Adrienne Rich had a vision of a society where no human dominates another, and also a rich and complex awareness of what it means to inhabit, express, and sustain love; in expression of this work, the music flows from concentrated lyricism to the uninhibited sounds of the moment.
Speaking of the ensemble Rosenbloom says, “What does it take for us to connect? Person to person, person to community, group to group; this has been a focus of my work for many years now - and Rich’s words were a natural fit for this project - poignant and wise. In music, we may find & create space for honest expression, for courage - but too, a place to listen with compassion, a place to be heard, and a place to hear others. Flyways are the migratory patterns of birds - the cycles flocks traverse year after year. Humans make their rounds too - but are we cognizant of how we’re moving together?”
Recently Flyways had the opportunity to record at Rufftone studios in Brooklyn - an artist run co-operative, filled with bright colored paintings, morning sun, and the sound of crickets filtering in from outside. The recording is set to be mastered in late spring & ultimately released on Fresh Sound / New Talent Records.
About Anaïs Maviel
Anaïs Maviel is a vocalist, percussionist, composer, writer and community facilitator. Her work focuses on the function of music as essential to settling common grounds, addressing Relation, and creating utopian future. Involved at the crossroads of mediums - music, visual art, dance, theater and performance art - she has been an in-demand creative force for artists such as William Parker, Steffani Jemison, César Alvarez, Daria Faïn - to give a sense of her wide company. As a leader she is dedicated to substantial creations from solo to large ensembles, music direction of cross-disciplinary works, and to expanding the power of music as a healing & transformative act. She performs extensively in New York, throughout North, South & Central America, and Europe. Her solo debut hOULe, out on NY based Gold Bolus Recordings, received international acclaim.
About Rashaan Carter
Rashaan Carter grew up in the Washington D.C. area. It was there, with the nurturing of his father, a saxophonist, and his mother, a jazz radio programmer, Rashaan forged an interest in music. After stints with various instruments, the bass became the voice for his musical expression. Rashaan worked and gained experience in the local scene in Washington D.C. and after high school, moved to New York City to attend the New School University. At the New School, Rashaan studied with Buster Williams and Reggie Workman. While attending the New School he also began to work with many of the faculty including Joe Chambers and Jimmy Owens, among others. Since moving to New York Rashaan has become entrenched in the jazz scene and has worked with Benny Golson, Curtis Fuller and Louis Hayes, Wallace Roney, David Murray, Henry Threadgill, Ravi Coltrane, Geri Allen, Marc Cary, Cindy Blackman, Doug and Jean Carn, Antoine Roney, Sonny Simmons, and many more. He's also studied with one of his prime influences, Ron Carter. Rashaan regularly performs with a myriad of artists in and outside of New York and can be found on various recordings as well.
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RECENT PRESS:
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"Révélation!" - Noadya Arnoux, Jazz Magazine, France
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"A prodigiously expressive and immediate pianist...stunning" - Mel Minter, Speaking Musically
Shout out from the The New York Times!
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Review from our PA Tour "...[an] extraordinary level of communal listening and intuitive response...bravely uncompromising music"
~ John Chacona, Let's Call This, Erie, PA
"Pianist Mara Rosenbloom Leads a Magically Hypnotic Trio at The Jazz Gallery" ~ New York Music Daily
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BONE LABYRINTH
A Collaboration with Violist Melanie Dyer
The labyrinth is a symbol/structure that has been discovered on every continent of the globe - we know humans have been building them, inscribing them above doors, and on coins, and using them as tools for mediation, and maybe some type of magic we can only guess at, for literally thousands of years. To enter into a labyrinth is to enter into a mediation of sorts - gradually abandoning linear time and directive, turning inward, perhaps towards enlightenment.
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All About Jazz Review from Martin Longley from our early endeavors!
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The Mara Rosenbloom Quartet
Mara Rosenbloom Piano & Composition Darius Jones Alto Saxophone Sean Conly Bass Nick Anderson Drums
"Rosenbloom renews the trite formulas of jazz with sparkling compositions that are both lyrically contemplative and rhythmically pulsating...This quartet plays music that renders believable the future of jazz. As both a player and composer, Rosenbloom is already singular and ahead of those players satisfied to reside in the dull water of familiar elements." Jakob Baekgaard, All About Jazz,
"This is tough, almost abrasive modern jazz, whose moments of lyricism or raw feeling are all the more powerful for taking no prisoners along the way..." Brian Morton, The UK Jazz Journal
"Pianist Mara Rosenbloom seemingly has a million catchy riffs and artfully employs them to share a personal circumscribed space but also to provide melodies for powerful improvisation. Both these aspects of her playing are wonderfully in evidence on Songs From the Ground. The seven self-penned tunes run the gamut from pensive soliloquies to earthy, blues-infused modern jazz...the Quartet uses its contrasting voices to tell fascinating stories." Elliot Simon, The New York City Jazz Record
“Many readers will not be familiar with the name or music of New York-based pianist, composer, arranger, and educator Mara Rosenbloom...I think we have just made a discovery equally important as the shape of a wheel...Rosenbloom's lyrical compositions and piano playing, working alongside Jones' soulful and emotional sax are matches made in heaven...The sounds captured on Songs from the Ground are not cluttered, each instrument has its own clearly defined place, there is no battling over who, why, where, when just an almost inbred synergy." Barry Wight, Costa News SPAIN
"Pianist Mara Rosenbloom suffuses artistic vision into each musical gesture—each corner and crevice—of her recent release, Songs from the Ground...an accumulated sum of highly musical moments that suggests the absolute clarity of an artistic aesthetic—the focus and direction of her musical voice are undeniable." Mark Lomanno, PhD, The Rhythm of Study-A blog for Improvising Jazz Communities
Other Folks Music (as a sideperson)
