Unfortunately, the New Tricks at the Groove on Grove show was rained out last night.  Just seconds before we were about to play, a rainstorm opened up on us.  Thus, canceling our performance and our friends in the Hangmen who were to play after us.

However, this morning we woke up to the nice surprise of another fantastic review by one of the band’s favorite jazz writers David Orthmann. David has come to several of our gigs and really understands the core of what we are going for. David particularly understands the creative brilliance that is going on in our “Shellen” rhythm section. Please check out his review of us and all of his other writings. Here is a link to our review.

New Tricks – Alternate side

by David Orthmann

Each of the nine tracks of Alternate Side by New Tricks, a quartet co-led by saxophonist Mike Lee and trumpeter Ted Chubb, is a . . . → Read More: After The Rain…. Comes a Great Review!]]>

Unfortunately, the New Tricks at the Groove on Grove show was rained out last night.  Just seconds before we were about to play, a rainstorm opened up on us.  Thus, canceling our performance and our friends in the Hangmen who were to play after us.

However, this morning we woke up to the nice surprise of another fantastic review by one of the band’s favorite jazz writers David Orthmann. David has come to several of our gigs and really understands the core of what we are going for. David particularly understands the creative brilliance that is going on in our “Shellen” rhythm section. Please check out his review of us and all of his other writings. Here is a link to our review.

New Tricks – Alternate side

by David Orthmann

Each of the nine tracks of Alternate Side by New Tricks, a quartet co-led by saxophonist Mike Lee and trumpeter Ted Chubb, is a journey of an irregular route with lots of detours. The melodies and some of the tunes’ structures resemble hard bop but, in general, the music is freer and more intensely interactive. The give and take between the four principals never ends. Because things frequently change in an instant, nothing can be taken for granted. The band is so tight, so complete in itself, that it’s difficult to comment on one individual’s performance without including the contributions of the others.

Any attempt to describe New Tricks’ sound starts at the band’s bottom. Bassist Kellen Harrison and drummer Shawn Baltazor have an uncanny ability to loosen and tighten up any groove—jazz, Latin, funk, and more than a few that have no name—in a matter of seconds. Virtually everything they play is a rich, bold, busy, nuanced dialogue that somehow always manages to remain grounded and stable. Lee and Chubb are intrepid, melodically fertile soloists who stand their ground and thrive in the midst of the near constant state of flux that is going on around them.

“Long Road Home” is, perhaps, the most variegated and rewarding of the lot. Baltazor’s precise, chatty, free form beats eventually disappear into thin air, only to be supplanted by a steady, gleeful stomp that evokes both Gene Krupa and Elvin Jones. Harrison enters and outlines a solemn, repetitive theme, and then the horns flesh out the melody. As the composition expands and takes flight, Harrison’s and Baltazor’s conversation into straight jazz time is eventually deconstructed into something punchy and rutted.

And so it goes, throughout Lee’s and Chubb’s solos. Harrison and Baltazor are always building something, tearing it apart, and then constructing yet another edifice in a different form. Early on in Lee’s slowly evolving, well-ordered and hearty improvisation, a flurry of notes by Harrison and Baltazor’s related tangle of beats sets off a chain reaction. Lee takes the bait, and for several breathtaking seconds it’s tough to tell who is responding to whom. For a time Chubb offers a neat series of bright melodies, as the bass and drums playfully dart around him. Awhile later, ten consecutive trumpet blasts bring out something primal in Baltazor, who slams against him and abruptly changes course the moment Chubb moves on.

Alternate Side demonstrates just how far the jazz mainstream can be stretched without becoming perverted and unrecognizable—and what a real band (as opposed to talented, like minded individuals herded into a studio without sufficient preparation) sounds like. New Tricks has been rehearsing in Lee’s basement and gigging—locally in New Jersey venues, as well as on Midwest and West Coast tours—for the past five years. The fruit of their hard work is a disc that will continue to be essential listening in the years to come.

published July 14th, 2010

Check out this new review in a great local NY jazz Magazine. You can also find the publication in the corner of the bar in all the best NY jazz clubs. Or you can read it online here.

By Mark Keresman In case you needed to be reminded appearances— and preconceptions—are often deceiving. Take the latest disc by the NYC-area quartet New Tricks—two horns, bass, and drums. One might think the contents are going to be post- Ornette Coleman “out” jazz. Wrong—this foursome forgoes the presence of a chordal instrument (like piano or guitar) not to “depart” from a conventional semblance of harmony but to emphasize harmony. So Alternate Side superficially evokes the classic Ornette Coleman Quartet(s) of the 1950s, the style is surging, hard-swinging hard bop a la Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, and Art Blakey, with wee touches of free jazz (as defined by Don Cherry, Dave . . . → Read More: “Alternate Side” review in Jazz Inside NY Magazine.]]>

Check out this new review in a great local NY jazz Magazine. You can also find the publication in the corner of the bar in all the best NY jazz clubs. Or you can read it online here.

By Mark Keresman
In case you needed to be reminded appearances—
and preconceptions—are often deceiving.
Take the latest disc by the NYC-area quartet
New Tricks—two horns, bass, and drums. One
might think the contents are going to be post-
Ornette Coleman “out” jazz. Wrong—this foursome
forgoes the presence of a chordal instrument
(like piano or guitar) not to “depart” from a
conventional semblance of harmony but to emphasize
harmony. So Alternate Side superficially
evokes the classic Ornette Coleman Quartet(s) of
the 1950s, the style is surging, hard-swinging
hard bop a la Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, and
Art Blakey, with wee touches of free jazz (as
defined by Don Cherry, Dave Douglas, and Ornette).

The sparse, mournful “Vicenza Days” gives
the horn-gents a chance to shine, but not in any
pyrotechnical manner. Ted Chubb is both brassy
(no pun intended) and elegiac, his crisp, fervent
tone somewhat evoking Booker Little. Mike
Lee’s tenor is velvety yet tart, with blues as the
soft/hard center. Both lads play soulfully, and
while the ambiance is glum it never becomes
oppressive, dull, or dirge-like. Lee’s vocalized
and slightly raspy tone on “Back To Work” flirts
briefly with flurries of free, but he swings mightily
over tumultuous (but not “free”/”out”) bass
and drums. Shawn Baltazor’s rumbles and crackles
with authority and with restraint. “New Dog”
has a wry, blues-tinged swagger (almost Ornettelike,
in fact), and Chubb gets to sear here with
his temperate and punchy, bob-and-weave approach.

New Tricks’ tunes—all originals—have an
immediate, dynamic, and tuneful drive. This
band is big on ensemble work, lots of interplay,
give-and-take. The tracks are fairly lengthy (nine
tunes in almost 70 minutes) but there’s very little
rambling. Alternate Side recalls Blakey’s Free
For All and Hubbard’s High Blues Pressure—
not avant-garde but aware of and valuing its
volatile energy, which gets worked into an edgybut-
accessible hard bop context. Sharp stuff,
this.

Here is the spotlight feature in May’s Hot House magazine on page 25!  We are very proud to be included in this publication.

Click below for the full screen view then click again at the bottom of the page to enlarge our article.

A new article about our great, fantastic, awesome, swinging, badass drummer appears in All About Jazz Today.  The author David Orthman has been good to New Tricks over the past couple of years. He’s one of the first to really “get it” about Shawn and New Tricks.

Yes, he really is this good!

I had the very wonderful experience of interviewing with WCPN’s Dan Poletta Tuesday morning. You can hear it here:

http://www.wcpn.org/WCPN/jazztracks/30131

Hey New Tricks CD is great – but don’t take my word for it, check out this review: