Jon Gordon - Stranger Than Fiction

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“Jon Gordon is one of these amazing young musicians I'm speaking of. We first met in 1988 when Jon called me for a lesson. I was doing quite a bit of teaching at the time on the faculties of William Paterson College as well as New York University. I had the chance to have some very intimate musical exchanges with some very inspiring young saxophonists. I'll never forget when Jon came to my loft. He played with such a strong sound and direction. It didn't feel like a lesson at all! We played music together!”

- Joe Lovano, insert notes Jon Gordon Ask Me Now [Criss Cross 1099] 

“In addition to Phil Woods, his first inspiration, Jon believes he "really learned to play Jazz by sitting in at Sweet Basil with Eddie Chamblee. I used to go down there every Saturday for almost seven years. That was important to me.

I also got to play with Roy Eldridge one time, which was a real honor." "One thing that's important to me is that I've often been in situations with a lot of older musicians, many of whom were very traditional and I feel really honored about that.  People like Roy Eldridge, Eddie Locke, Red Holloway, Barney Kessel, Doc Cheatham, Jay McShann and others.  I try to be as forward looking as I can be but I don't want to ever lose the central qualities that those guys had and I got to be around."

- Bret Primack, insert notes to Jon Gordon Witness [Criss Cross 1121] 

"Right around the time I hit 16, though, I fell in love with Jazz. I heard two Phil Woods records, Musique Du Bois and Song of Sisyphus, and they totally flipped me out. That started a one-year odyssey where I followed Phil around to all the clubs and haggled him for a year.  Finally one day, he looked at me and said, 'Well, can you play?' Before I could respond, he said, 'Well, it doesn't matter because you've got to pay me anyway.  Here's my card. Call my wife.' That began a wonderful two-year association where I studied with him maybe 10 or 11 times over a two-year period. After the second lesson, he never accepted a cent!  I think there's something very magical about being able to stand next to one of your heroes, and something happens to you when you hear music live as opposed to hearing records.  I was able to play duets with Phil at a point where he was like my hero, the one guy in the world I would choose to study with.”

As told to Ted Panken, insert notes to Jon Gordon Along the Way [Criss Cross 1138]

"Jon Gordon is a master. His compositions, improvisation, tone, and technical virtuosity set him apart as an elite musician for our time."

 - Brandon Bernstein, Jazz Improv NY

"Gordon has embraced the history of his instrument, carrying with it the ability to extend music as a universal language."

- Wayne Shorter

I wanted to get this feature up on this date to coincide with the September 17, 2021 release date of saxophonist-composer Jon Gordon's new recording - Stranger Than Fiction -  on ArtistShare AS 0190.

Figuratively-speaking, I’ve known Jon since the mid-1990s through the release of three recordings under his leadership on Gerry Teekens’ Criss Cross label.

His version of Chick’s Tune flashed across my car’s FM radio on the way to work one foggy San Francisco morning, and on the way home [in still more fog] that afternoon I stopped off at the Tower Records Store in North Beach and picked up the source of the recording - Jon Gordon Ask Me Now [Criss Cross 1099 - 1994]] that also featured trumpeter Tim Hagans [whom I remembered from his stint with the Stan Kenton band in the late 1970s]. Jon and Tim were “surrounded” by a powerful rhythm section made up of Bill Charlap [piano], Larry Grenadier [b] and Billy Drummond [d].

Chick’s Tune is based on You Stepped Out of a Dream, and the familiar strains of both melodies coupled with workouts on What Is This Thing Called Love, Giant Steps, Gaslight and Ask Me Now, also all familiar tunes, gave me a chance to set my ears, so to speak, and checkout what Jon was laying down. [I still hold my breath every time I hear Tim solo as his improvisations are the Jazz equivalent of roller coaster rides. If you’ve ever heard Conte Candoli solo on trumpet, then you know what I mean.]

Although Jon did contribute an original composition to Jon Gordon Ask Me Now [Joe Said So], it wasn’t until I picked up a copy of Jon Gordon Witness, his next CD for Criss Cross [1121] which followed in 1995 that I was introduced to the compositional side of Jon Gordon as the recording features seven of his originals. He was an interesting composer then and continues to be one now.

As you would imagine, a lot has changed over the past 25 years and the principal change that I’ve discerned in Jon’s music is that his original music and saxophone playing have become more integrated. His earlier music, while thematically interesting, was essentially vehicles to solo over; now the compositions are structured in such a way that Jon’s improvisations are extensions of his themes, that is to say, they are almost inseparable.

Enter Jon Gordon Stranger Than Fiction -  on ArtistShare AS 0190. After searching for ways to describe Jon’s latest effort, I re-read the following media release by Ann Braithwaite of Braithwaite & Katz and decided to share it with you “as is” because it does such an excellent job of describing the background to and the music on the recording.

“Saxophonist/composer Jon Gordon confronts our bizarre reality with true beauty on his stunning new nonet recording Jon Gordon Stranger Than Fiction, due out September 17, 2021 via ArtistShare, features a stellar band with Derrick Gardner, Alan Ferber, John Ellis and others, with special guests including Orrin Evans and Jocelyn Gould

Truth has become a bizarrely contentious issue in this divisive era of fake news and alternative facts. Still, as alto saxophonist and composer Jon Gordon points out on his latest album, one oft-repeated maxim may be more true now than ever: that truth itself is indeed Jon Gordon Stranger Than Fiction. Over the course of ten original compositions arranged for a stellar nonet, Gordon explores the warped modern existence that we've all grappled with during the past several months and years.

The music on Jon Gordon Stranger Than Fiction, due out September 17, 2021 through ArtistShare, reflects Gordon's realization that reality takes twists and turns far more unpredictable than any author would dare write. In both his personal and professional life as well as the topsy-turvy world of politics, the composer has been forced to pinch himself repeatedly to confirm that what he was living was cold, hard truth rather than some strange dream (or, quite often, nightmare).

Fortunately that awareness has resulted in a great deal of stunning new music, brought to very real life by a top-notch band of peers and former students and fellow faculty from the University of Manitoba, where Gordon has taught for nearly a decade. On Jon Gordon Stranger Than Fiction he's joined by trumpeter Derrick Gardner, trombonist and arranger Alan Ferber, saxophonists Reginald Lewis and Tristan Martinuson, bass clarinetists John Ellis and Anna Blackmore, guitarist and vocalist Jocelyn Gould, guitarist Larry Roy, pianists Orrin Evans and Will Bonness, bassist Julian Bradford and drummer Fabio Ragnelli.

"Around 2000, I began to be aware that things were not as I'd hoped in our country", Gordon said. "For all the troubles of our past, I had hope that the country was headed in a better direction. But I became disillusioned and angered by so many people seeming to cede to a kind of non-reality. And in the last few years that's only gotten more apparent."

The album's title track was written at the time of that initial revelation, though like the reality it reflects has only grown in scale and complexity with Alan Ferber's nonet arrangement. The trombonist, who served as assistant producer for the project, also contributed the bold arrangement for "Havens," which Gordon originally recorded in quintet form on 2008's Within Worlds. Gordon himself arranged the remainder of the pieces.

"Pointillism" opens the album with gradually accruing fragments of sound from the horns, which finally give way to a tense duel between Gordon and drummer Ragnelli as the ensemble surges behind them. "Havens" settles into a taut groove that belies the fact that the band did not record together thanks to geography and the pandemic. Gordon recorded initially with the core quintet, then added horns and guests who recorded in their own homes. The inquisitive title track follows, leading into the deceptively simple, graceful "Dance." Referring to a wandering mendicant in the Hindu tradition, the brief, through-composed "Sunyasin" reflects the temptation of renouncing the trappings of modern life while realizing the challenges it presents. Jocelyn Gould, a former student of Gordon's who won this year's Juno (Canadian Grammy) for "Jazz Album of the Year," adds an air of enticing mystery with her wordless vocals.

"Counterpoint" is a self-explanatory title for the tune's intricately interwoven lines and harmonies, while "Bella" sways alluringly, with one of a pair of guest appearances by pianist Orrin Evans. The massed horns of "Modality" allow a ray of hope to peek through the clouds, leading into the stunning fanfare of "Steps." The album ends with "Waking Dream," a summation of the surreal experience that attempts to shake the listener out of their somnambulant reverie and, hopefully, into some kind of constructive action.

While recording with a larger ensemble has been a long-held desire, the impetus for Stranger Than Fiction came with a series of Leonard Bernstein concerts which Gordon was involved in for the composer's 2018 centennial. He found one famous Bernstein quote continuing to resonate with him: "This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before." Gordon's first response to that call to aesthetic arms was 2019's quartet outing Answer, which pushed towards beauty; on Stranger Than Fiction he aimed for something even more lush but also more urgent and confrontational.

"I feel like we're in a crisis on many levels," he says. "And the only way you deal with these crises - the bullying and lies and authoritarian denial of reality - is by calling it out."

Gordon comes to this with first-hand experience, as he documented in his 2012 memoir, For Sue. "I grew up in an alcoholic family," he recalls. "When you're dealing with an alcoholic or an addict, sometimes they'll look at you and say one thing, then 30 seconds later they'll turn around and say the polar opposite. You're trying to argue with somebody that's not in reality. I feel like we're dealing with that as a country and a planet, and it causes the same kind of pain in a family relationship, in a community, in a society and in the world."”

Jon Gordon

A native New Yorker, saxophonist and composer Jon Gordon was born into a musical family and began playing at age ten. Classically trained, Gordon's love for jazz was sparked when a friend played him a Phil Woods record. He began lessons with the legendary altoist while sitting in regularly with saxophonist Eddie Chamblee at Sweet Basil. Since attending Manhattan School of Music, Gordon has worked with the likes of Maria Schneider, Ron McClure, Clark Terry, Benny Carter, Phil Woods, T.S. Monk, Bill Mays, the Vanguard Orchestra, Bill Charlap, Ray Barretto, Mark Turner, George Colligan, Chico Hamilton, Jimmy Cobb, Ben Riley, Harry Connick Jr., Bob Mintzer, Bill Mobley, and the N.Y. Pops Orchestra, among many others. In November of 1996, he won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition, judged by Wayne Shorter, Jackie McLean, Joe Lovano, Jimmy Heath and Joshua Redman. He has released more than a dozen albums under his own name and is the author of three acclaimed books.

Jon Gordon - Stranger Than Fiction

ArtistShare - AS0190 - Recorded October 2020

Release date September 17, 2021

More about Jon can be found at www.jongordonmusic.com 

Order information is available here.