Smalls is owned and operated by Spike Wilner and we are ecstatic that he continues to ask us to perform there and participate in the performing community there. Smalls has become the center of the NYC jazz scene, if you go there enough you will run in to just about everyone. It is also a place to meet, hang, jam, and party with our fellow musicians and music lovers. The live video stream . . . → Read More: New Year, New Music, New Gigs, New Tricks!]]> So 2012 has started with quite a bang for New Tricks. We had five great gigs in the New York city area. I find this quite inspiring seeing that January is usually the slowest month for most bands and musicians. We have been working some mew music out on the band stand and we have a couple more tunes to come but we are close to almost an entire new albums worth of material. This months gigs culminated with two important gigs for the band at Smalls, and the New Brunswick Jazz Project. Both of these groups are outstanding examples of individuals taking on the cause of keeping the jazz community alive and vibrant.

Smalls is owned and operated by Spike Wilner and we are ecstatic that he continues to ask us to perform there and participate in the performing community there. Smalls has become the center of the NYC jazz scene, if you go there enough you will run in to just about everyone. It is also a place to meet, hang, jam, and party with our fellow musicians and music lovers. The live video stream and audio archive is also a fantastic way for the club to document what is happening there and let the musicians that are playing there be exposed to a wider audience than they may regularly play for. We will let you know when the audio archive from our performance on the 18th is up and we will try to get a little video from the gig as well.

The New Brunswick Jazz Project is something different but equally interesting. This organization is run by three music lovers Michael Tublin, Jimmy Jenihan, and Virginia deBarry. These three individuals live in the town of New Bruswick New Jersey that happens to also house the Rutgers Jazz program (which I happen to be an alumni of). They saw that although they had many great musicians living in the area there was really no place to perform locally. So instead of creating one place to have jazz, they set up a network of several venues that now have jazz every week. They host concerts, jam sessions, restaurant gigs, and now a jazz festival in the fall. They have almost single handily created a scene out of someplace that really did not have one at all before them. That is quite an impressive feet considering the economics jazz music. This is not these people jobs, they do this in their free time out of love for the music. If only all of our musicians loved this music that much. We very much look forward to performing for them again!

As another new year begins for they band and as we continue to grow I think about how New Tricks functions in our lives as band members. With out getting into too many details, one of our members has gone through some fairly traumatic personal strife in the recent and coming months. It has been very rewarding too see our gigs be a catharsis for him. However, it has made me think how the band is that for all of us. This is probably the only musical situation where all four of us can feel completely free to be exactly who we are as musicians. And while being four fairly distinct and strong musical personalities we create a sound that is quite singular. I can say fairly safely that the best all four of us sound as individuals is while we are playing in this band. This kind of freedom is cathartic and I think this may be why we have been able to keep the band continuing forward for 6 plus years.

We are trying hard to put together another tour this spring. It will not be our usual 3 week tour de force, but it will be a small 5 day or so one. There is nothing more I am looking forward to than getting back on the road with these 3 other musicians. We will keep you posted as things come together, so stay tuned.

Ted

1/4 The Brooklyn Lyceum 8pm-11pm $10 cover http://www.facebook.com/brooklynlyceum 227 4th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11215 718.857.4816

1/5 The Pilsner Haus in Hoboken 8pm- 12am. Great beer, german food, atmosphere, and weekly jazz with no cover. http://www.pilsenerhaus.com/ 1422 Grand St. 201-683-5465

1/12 The Garage 10:30pm-2:30am. Come make the late village hang with us!99 7th Avenue South NY, NY (212) 645-0600 http://www.garagerest.com/index.html

1/18 Smalls Jazz Club 11:30-2:00am concert and jam session. 183 West 10th St. NY, NY http://www.smallsjazzclub.com

1/19 Makeda’s presented by the New Brunswick Jazz Project. 338 George St. New Brunswick NJ http://www.nbjp.org/

This year our recent recording “Alternate Side” made a number of “Best of 2011″ lists by some fantastic writers and bloggers. You can check out the articles at the links below.

David Orthmann

Arnaldo Desouteiro- http://jazzstation-oblogdearnaldodesouteiros.blogspot.com/2011/12/dec.html

Nacht Records

This is a video of how Mike see’s the band. Just joking it’s really just bad camera placement. We had some nice musical moments here so I put it up anyway.

On sunday we played at the Harlem Music venue “The Shrine”.  There is always an extremely diverse clientele here and the bar staff is great, which creates an inspiring atmosphere to create in.  Check out this clip of our theme song “New Tricks”.

Here is a link to an article in the Washington Examiner about our performance.

We continue this week at Kenny’s Castaways on Thursday with a short set at 9pm. There is no cover so come hang with us!

On Saturday we are very excited to be playing two full sets at the Bethlehem Musik-Fest at 6pm on the Banana Island Stage. If you live in western Jersey, or eastern PA. please come and check us out. This is a fantastic festival so don’t miss out. We are really looking forward to this one

Here is a bit of video from the Bethlehem Musik-Fest on August 6th. We are playing one of our favorite tunes “1919″.

The club was so packed I was not able to get a great angle for the video, so I had to set it up on the bar to the side of us. This is not the best video I have taken. However, it was such a great night I had to put some video up to share with the people who were not there, or could not tune in to the live web-stream.

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 . . . → 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