Thomas Chapin and Me: A History and a Remembrance

Bruce Lee Gallanter, NYC downtown music scene "unofficial" historian/archivist and owner of Downtown Music Gallery, February 2012

During my music-journalism undergraduate years at Glassboro State College, NJ, I discovered jazz in a big way, and set to studying its history, its milestone practitioners and their recordings. Upon graduation in 1976, I drastically stepped up my gig attendance at jazz clubs, loft spaces and at festivals, mostly in New York City. During my college years, many of my New Jersey friends had become musicians… jazz musicians! My passion sought any way to be a part of the various musics I enjoyed and wished to foster - not being a serious musician myself, my first step? I would organize jam sessions at my parent’s house whenever they went on vacation!

Through these initial activities, I met a tenor sax player from Hillside, NJ named Howie Brown, with whom I went to many gigs of all kinds of jazz, with each musical offering spurring an ever-enlarging appreciation. There were also free concerts at the Rutgers/Livingston Jazz School which featured Dexter Gordon or Woody Shaw, and others of equally legendary stature. Opening for each of these RLJS nights was the Rutgers Student Jazz Ensemble, which was led by Paul Jefferies. Sometimes there would be as many as fifteen young horn players on stage, each taking just one short solo. All of them were adequate, and many showed promise, but… there was this one goateed cat with a cap who absolutely soared during his brief moment and blew all the others away! Howie and I were both stunned by this guy, knowing that he was special, very special! "Omigosh! Who the hell is that guy???" Several shows later, each with amazing moments from the stylish 'Mr. Goatee', we found out who he was. His name was Thomas Chapin.

Time passed. In the early eighties I started writing for a fanzine called Jersey Beat. First I wrote short features on musicians I knew close to home, and later was asked to review albums and singles of groups from all over New Jersey. One of my first assignments was of a little-known psychedelic band from New Brunswick called the Young Turks. I subsequently saw them perform - a part of their set featured a poet named John Richey whose words and presentation were intriguing. After their set, I introduced myself and showed their leader Billy Snow, and John, my reviews of their singles. They couldn't believe my overt enthusiasm for their recordings and performance. We became fast friends and I caught them live on many occasions. I began going to poetry readings to see more of Mr. Richey, and even read my own poems on occasion.

My writings enabled me to book festivals in Rahway, close to where I was living, at a place called Modern Artist Studios. These festivals usually featured five or six bands on two weekend nights, including John Richey's new duo outfit, Lunar Bear. This fine duo evolved into a larger ensemble over time becoming the Lunar Bear Ensemble. John soon joined a new outfit called Machine Gun.

Guitarist/composer/producer Robert Musso had assembled an astonishing coterie of uniquely gifted musicians all from the Rutgers/Livingston College. John described each member of this new band, when John mentioned their astonishing horn man, I already knew there was only one person whom he could be talking about: Thomas Chapin. And it was! When I saw Machine Gun play live, I was amazed by their intensity. There were no other bands quite like them at the time. Their sets, totally focused yet completely improvised, were powerful beyond belief, even supernaturally ecstatic at times. John played samples of radio/television broadcasts and other recordings, creating Burroughs-like cut-ups of text and found sounds. Bob Musso's electric guitar and Chapin's sax would erupt together with volcanic intensity. Needless to say, I was present whenever Machine Gun played, several times with the legendary Sonny Sharrock sitting in. I went on to book gigs for them. Thomas' band nickname was 'Rage.' He was the most riveting alto saxist I had ever heard - and this I say having previously immersed myself in the recordings and performances of legendary players such as Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake... But being a phenomenal and unique player was merely part of his talent - his compositions would prove groundbreaking when he started his own groups.

Throughout the 1980’s, I had gotten involved with the N.Y. Downtown music scene, becoming friends with John Zorn, Eugene Chadbourne, Fred Frith, Tom Cora, Elliott Sharp, Wayne Horvitz, et al. When the Knitting Factory got started in 1986, I was there continuously. Around this time, Bob Musso was doing engineering work for Bill Laswell and started his own label called MuWorks. I did volunteer work for MuWorks, and became friends with Thomas, taking every opportunity to see him play with his newly organized trio with Mario Pavone and Steve Johns. Thomas asked me - ME! - to write the liner notes for his debut disc on MuWorks, Radius! I was honored and proud to do this.

During the same period, I had also befriended a NJ band called Regressive Aid, which later evolved into Scornflakes, an amazing quartet that combined jazz/rock/punk/prog elements in their sound. Not so different than Machine Gun in some ways. When they opened for Black Flag, one of the most popular and influential of all hardcore bands, (the relatively unknown) Scornflakes knocked the members of Black Flag out. Black Flag's guitarist Greg Ginn, borrowed the rhythm team (Andrew Weiss & Sim Cain) and they became GONE. Black Flag’s singer Henry Rollins also hired the same powerful rhythm team for his own band. Anyone checking out that lineup of the Rollins Band knew Henry had made the perfect choice.

Between practically living at the Knitting Factory and working days around the corner at Manny's 'Lunch for Your Ears' record store, I became friends with the two founders of the Knit, Michael Dorf and Bob Appel. They put me on the permanent guest list and occasionally asked me for advice on gigs - I was all too happy to oblige. The Downtown Scene was now emerging and musicians and serious listeners were coming together to hear new sounds.

Both Zorn and myself were fans of the more extreme punk/hardcore musics; Zorn incorporated that aspect into his 1988 all-star band Naked City. I mentioned to Zorn that I knew Andrew and Sim from Scornflakes and that they would love to play with him. All three thought this was a great idea so I approached Michael Dorf about the gig. Dorf gave me a date and asked what to call the band? I said Zornflakes! Unfortunately Michael didn't realize I was joking, and placed the ads with that name - the trio was NOT happy when they saw the listing in the paper!

But here's the important point – Mr. Dorf asked who I thought should open? No hesitation - the Thomas Chapin Trio, of course! He'd never heard of Chapin but, again, he trusted me. The concert, in December, 1989, was sold out, and the Thomas Chapin Trio blew away the packed audience! Zorn also became a fan of Thomas's playing and compositions and later played on one of Thomas’ CDs. After the gig, Michael and Bob came to me and said you were right, Chapin’s Trio were "AMAZING!"

A month later, Michael and Bob started the Knitting Factory Works label. Michael called to tell me about the first release - Thomas Chapin Trio! YES! Dorf asked if I wanted to be compensated for turning him onto Mr. Chapin? NOPE! Just treat Thomas with respect he deserves, I said - did I mention that Thomas was also one of the sweetest, and generous human beings I had ever met?

I am pleased to say that Mr. Dorf did indeed keep that promise. That lineup, with Pavone and Johns, and later Michael Sarin on drums, eventually released eight separate albums for KnitWorks, as well as doing a series of Knitting Factory-booked international tours, which garnered them a massive worldwide fan base.

To me, Thomas' trio was perhaps the finest jazz unit to emerge from the Downtown Scene… I caught them on dozens of occasions and was knocked out each and every time. Although a small in size, they captured the essence and magic of all that modern jazz, whether large or small ensembles, has to offer: soaring, swinging, ultra-tight, always intense and filled with fire. Thomas' music and the trio's playing embodied what was great about the history of jazz. I was elated when the trio evolved and added strings on one disc and a horn section on another. Each of the their discs on the Knit label was a gem!

Around the same time (early nineties), I got a call from the great pianist Borah Bergman who asked me to recommend a few saxophonists who could match his level of extreme intensity and creativity. I put him in contact with Louie Belogenis, Elliott Levin, and of course Thomas. Mr. Bergman ended up practicing with each of these sax players and developing a strong musical bond with each, but he recorded with just one of the three. In 1992, MuWorks recorded and released a studio effort by Thomas Chapin and Borah Bergman called "Inversions". It is one of the most powerful duo offerings I've heard – as of 2012 it is still creatively challenging listen. This duo played live on a few occasions, but were finally recorded for a second disc, this time in concert, called 'Toronto 1997', only a year before Thomas' untimely passing.

I'm proud to have watched Thomas over those two decades, gathering ever greater accolades during his short career - his recorded legacy lasted only 17 years, 1981-1997. Every performance was great, filled with his positive energy. I can still hear his sax and flute tone, passion and creativity in my memory. His infectious laughter, smile and way of moving on the stage remains with me.

After doing a series of memorial gigs for Thomas a decade after his passing, Terri Chapin gave me a large poster of his image that I display proudly at my record store. It captures his visual spirit and seems to shed some positive energy to our music shop. New, younger listeners are still discovering Thomas’ legacy - I often play his music at our shop as well and the response is unanimously ecstatic. He is still reaching out to touch us from the beyond. Recently someone asked me, after seeing the poster, if Thomas and I were brothers. I smiled and said that we were in more ways than one.

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Editor's Note: In Thomas' Own Words (see Bio/In His Own Words), we add here Thomas' remembrance about the first night the Trio ever performed together at a festival curated by Gallantar at an outdoor space in the East Village's Avenue B, called The Gas Station, this was just before opening the John Zorn 1989 New Year's Eve concert at Knit Fac mentioned above:

“A friend [Bruce Gallanter of Downtown Music Gallery] asked me to put something together for a mini-festival in the summer of ’89. I had a sextet at the time, and thought a trio would be a little different. Mario and I had already played together for eight years, and Mario introduced me to Pheeroan ak Laff, our first drummer. The same friend hooked me up with the Knitting Factory, which recorded our first gig – with Steve Johns on drums – in December ’89 and put it on Volume 3 of their anthology series. They started Knitting Factory Works soon after that, when Mike Sarin joined the trio. We were the label’s first signing which gave us the forum.”

A Conversation with Thomas Chapin

by Vernon Frazer - Cadence - May 1987

Alto saxophonist and flutest, Tom Chapin was born 3/9/56 in Manchester, Conn. He has studied with Jackie McLean and Paul Jeffrey and has done various freelance work and recordings. At the time of this interview, he was musical director of the Lionel Hampton Big Band. He has recorded one record under his leadership.

CADENCE: Do you have a preference between flute and saxophone?

THOMAS CHAPIN: It's like a right hand and a left hand. I'm ambi-instrumental. They're useful as tools in different moods. They're not really limited, although people tend to connote certain things with a saxophone and certain things with a flute. With the flute, though, I find that I have to be able to hear myself very well to play it, and the other musicians have to be extremely sensitive to it. It is somewhat more delicate. As far as technique, I've been going back and forth for so long, there's no conscious thought of it.

CAD: After high school, did you attend the Hartt College of Music immediately?

T.C.: Actually, I went to the University of Miami for a semester, first. I just found that Florida didn't really agree with me, I'm really a New England man. But also, I was disappointed at not being accepted into one of the school bands. When you come out of high school you think you're really hot stuff, you know, but when you come to college you realize that there's some hot stuff coming from every high school. Then I went to Hartt, where I studied with Jackie McLean briefly. I took a couple of his history courses and learned quite a lot from those. I learned just from being around someone of his stature. Hartt, at the time, didn't have the full-time jazz curriculum that it has now. I was studying classical saxophone there. But I was in Paul Jeffrey's jazz laboratory. Paul really challenged me, he was very demanding of me. From elementary school, junior high, right on through, I've had very demanding teachers and that, more than anything, has crystallized my abilities.

CAD: Do you find that classical training helped or hindered your jazz playing?

T.C.: I don't feel that one hinders the other. If you play music with all that you have to give it, it doesn't really matter what you're playing. I think we're finding some fundamental changing going on with music and the arts in general. We're finding a blending of things and a broader appreciation of more kinds of music, finally, in America. In Europe, you'll find it's quite broader already. People always tend to make divisions where there really aren't any divisions. I mean, there are differences, as there are differences in cultures, but there are underlying factors which unite them, also. When you talk about classical music, you're talking about a style more than you are any technical or emotional difference. Baroque music was great (to) improvise upon, it wasn't so hard and fast as we might imagine it. When you look at the tradition that jazz comes out of or the tradition that "European classical" music comes out of, there are similarities and there are differences. But it's all music, it's all made of the same stuff.

CAD: I understand you followed Paul Jeffrey to Rutgers when he left Hartt.

T.C.: I did. Paul presented so much music that I was quite inclined to follow him where I could take a "jazz" direction more completely. While I was at Rutgers, I became friends with James Spaulding, also. He was one of my big influences, from high school on. The way he played really touched something inside of me, on both flute and saxophone. He has a very fluid sound. He's traditional in some senses, but very ethereal in others. What he does is very fresh. After two years I graduated from Livingston, which was the college I went to called the "experimental division." That's where they put the jazz guys. They also had the "avant-garde" people there. There was a big division between them and the jazz people, but for me, I never felt that difference. It's always funny when you get into those distinctions between music. I always wonder why people are battling it out.

CAD: Do you feel that studying jazz formally can affect a person's originality, that instead of playing what he feels a musician might say, "Well, it's time to play my C Blues Scale?"

T.C.: I always felt like I rebelled against that, to a certain extent. You do need to understand why something works and why something works well. You need to understand the language. You take elements and combine them, manipulate them in a way that is particular to you and, hopefully, more particular to you than to another person or style. People have their shadows or influences, but nobody can really imitate totally.

CAD: After graduation, did you go directly into Lionel Hampton's band?

T.C.: Not immediately. I did accompaniment for dancers at Wesleyan University in Middletown, then I decided to move to New York. The same day I signed a lease, I got a call from my mother, who said that Lionel Hampton's office had called and wanted me to make a rehearsal. I look at that as a very important day.

CAD: How long did it take you to become Hampton's musical director?

T.C.: It really wasn't my goal. It was sort of thrust on me after about a year.

CAD: What does a musical director do?

T.C.: In my case, with Gates – that's Lionel – it's a little unusual. I think in that he likes to have ultimate control. I really take up the slack. When he isn't directing, I direct. When he does, I stay out of the way. I go over the tunes we're going to play with him, get the order of tunes from him, organize everybody to get onstage at the same time, give cues, count off tunes, that kind of thing.

CAD: What are the differences between playing in a big band and a smaller group?

T.C.: An entirely different set of circumstances. In a big band, you're involved in section playing. You play with other instruments of your own kind and learn how to blend. When you solo, it's in very strict confines. The small group is open to as much as the people in it want to do. There's more room, depending on who you're working with. When I'm leading my own groups, I enjoy playing melodies the way I want to phrase them.

CAD: You seem to be fascinated by the intercultural aspects of music. Are you trying to accomplish anything specific when you use elements of other cultures in your own work?

T.C.: Specifically, no. I find myself attracted by the sound and feeling of so many different musics. I'm looking for the commonality of these feelings rather than their differences. For instance in "Consolation", a Baden Powell tune I recorded, I used a Brazilian tune and had an oud, which is a Middle Eastern lute, playing with the saxophone. The tune is an African chant, really. Baden Powell uses a lot of what they call Afro- Brazilian music. Of course, in a lot of North African music, they use the oud. It's all related, although you wouldn't make the connection immediately.

CAD: About the time you joined Lionel Hampton, you also released The Bell of the Heart on Mario Pavone's Alacra label.

T.C.: Indeed, I met Mario the night Paul Jeffrey put together the Mingus Tribute band for a concert in Bushnell Park in Hartford. It was a very nice mix of Hartford and New York musicians. After that, Mario and I started playing together down at the Hillside in Waterbury. Mario was putting out his own album, Shodo, and Joe Fonda's Looking for the Lake. The Bell of the Heart arose out of the compositions I was writing at the time, which Mario really liked. We put a nine-piece group together and recorded them.

CAD: Did The Bell of the Heart influence your career in any way?

T.C.: I think so, definitely. The whole LP scene is really a vital step for a musician. While we can always feel in retrospect that we never quite did what we wanted to do, we accomplished something very important at that time. I'm very grateful to Mario Pavone for producing The Bell of the Heart. He's one of the people in the area who's always shown a great interest in my music. It's rarer than you would think to find people who are genuinely interested in what you're doing. The people and the energies they bring to the music are what makes the music happen. It's a very kindred relationship, shall we say.

CAD: Since The Bell of the Heart, you've released three cassettes. What made you decide to go the cassette routine?

T.C.: It was quite by accident. I'd been working on the street with some people and through various connections that group came into the Blue Note on Monday nights. The producer of the Monday Night session suggested to me that I make a tape to be given to a specific record company. Being naïve at the time, I invested the money and gave them the tape, which they promptly did nothing with. But I don't regret putting out the tape. I did things on it that I really feel solid about and have been able to grow from.

CAD: Some artists have been releasing their work on cassette because they lose too much money on self-produced records. Do you see cassettes as a means for musicians and other artists to get their work out to the public?

T.C.: Only in a very limited sense. I think the LP is still where it's at right now. Most radio stations will not play cassettes if they don't know you. You're much better off with a record, as far as the public hearing your music. But the cassettes are much cheaper to produce. They're much easier to carry and sell on gigs. The record, in the other hand, offers you so much more information in terms of pictures or even liner notes, which are very difficult to put on cassette. I would much prefer to have my work on records and I'm confident that this will be happening soon.

CAD: How do you approach composing?

T.C.: Compositions come to you in so many different ways, they really do. Many compositions have come just by me sitting down at a piano and an idea will come out right from the start, just from the energy put into it. Sometimes a whole tune will just write itself right out of that. One tune I wrote was 'Journey of a Thousand Miles". The melody was coming to me as I was traveling on the bus to a gig at the 880 Club in Hartford. The phrase is five bars long, then ten bars long, then five bars long. The melody is in a pentatonic scale, which is a five-note scale, and it's in 5/4 time. It came about very naturally. I wasn't thinking in that way. When you don't think, sometimes you surprise yourself. Looking at that song in retrospect, I can almost feel it's not from me. Some compositions just come out like that. Others I've written as exercises. I'll take a set of changes in the traditional jazz form, take a melodic idea and expand it over the changes. Some melodies will work like that and others will not.

CAD: Do you ever write for a particular group or idiom?

T.C.: I can, but my principle thrust is really in feeling natural emanations, letting the music come through as much as possible, and I do that mostly on the piano.

CAD: When you come into Connecticut, you frequently play with a "local" rhythm section. In that situation, do you rely on the standard repertoire?

T.C.: Mostly, because we don't get the chance to rehearse as much as I would like to. I enjoy rehearsing, but a lot of the time our schedules don't permit us to do that. Compositions must be worked out a little before they can truly be played well. Of course, if you work with the same people often enough, you can gradually work tunes into the repertoire.

CAD: Do you find that pick up rhythm sections are as bad as the press makes them out to be or is it just that the musicians don't have the name value?

T.C.: There are so many musicians out here. Everybody chooses a different path in their life and at some point they may be in the public eye and other times may do something else and still be just as involved in music. For instance, I was in San Francisco recently to work at Pier 47. Donald Bailey was in the rhythm section. A great drummer! He used to work with Jimmy Smith. New York is not the be-all and end-all of everything. It's a staging ground. As far as I'm concerned, it's a very unpleasant place to live. But there are many scenes around the country that are quite viable, quite happening. It's just more than you could imagine. They may not be getting the press coverage that some people are, and sometimes quite regrettably in comparison. In New York it's the same way. In New York, there are so many fantastic musicians who get no credit for what they're doing. You feel that maybe they should get the recognition that some of the other people are getting, but the business doesn't allow for such a thing. I feel that there is really one important aspect to that: those who are afforded the recognition and the power – the dubious power – of "commercial success" have more opportunity to explore themselves musically. In other words, they don't have to get a job. They don't have to work in the Post Office, as a messenger boy or whatever the hell kind of boy you are. Those who don't make it beyond that economic hump are in a tight bind.

CAD: Are you looking to form a group of your own?

T.C.: Yes, I've been working towards that for quite awhile. Of course, you always have to work with variations because people are busy with different things. At the same time, though, I'm really looking forward to doing a wide variety of things. For instance, a week from today I'm doing a rock and roll gig. The day after that, I'm starting rehearsals for a modern dance production. I recently borrowed a synthesizer from a friend and I'm starting to understand a little more about the electronic medium, which I was never exposed to as much as I would have liked. Brian Johnson and I are putting together saxophone, drums and poetry. Also, I'm working with New Music ensembles from the John Cage tradition. I'm getting the chance to explore a lot of different things and I'm expanding my own music as much as possible.

%(small)5/31/86 - Storrs, Conn. © Cadence Magazine 2005. Published by CADNOR Ltd. All rights reserved.%

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Downtown Standout Thomas Chapin Leads an Innovative Trio

September 6, 1996

By Bob Blumenthal

perugia, Italy – “I’m constantly amazed that we can play anything, with no restrictions, and people always seem to relate to it,” Thomas Chapin marveled; and those lucky enough to hear Chapin’s trio in Italy this summer shared his amazement.  For 10 nights in July, during the run of  Umbria Jazz ’96 in Perugia, the alto saxophonist, bassist Mario Pavone and drummer Michael Sarin had soared through two sets a night at the subterranean Club Il Pozzo, dispensing loose but lucid, coherently combustible jazz that left exhilarated listeners demanding more.

“Were always rooted,” explained Chapin, whose trio will work similar magic at Scullers on Thursday.  “And if you can begin with something that people relate to and take them a little further, it’s like show-and-tell.  That’s what I’m supposed to be doing.”

During a lengthy afternoon conversation on a terrace with one of Perugia’s most commanding views, Chapin left no doubt that what he is supposed to be doing is music.  “It was a state of being, it was never a consideration,” he says of his career choice.  “I’ve never taken a day gig.  I’ve always supported myself playing music.  And the music I play is what I need to do.  If I was playing weddings, I’d die spiritually.   There is a drawing power of the spirit, and if you’re lucky, you get aligned with it.”

Yet Chapin is not content to be pigeonholed.  While he is a mainstay of the Knitting Factory Works label and a primary figure in New York’s downtown scene, his alto (plus sopranino sax and flute) sounds just as convincing in the more straight-ahead settings of his Arabesque Jazz albums.  Chapin got his first major professional exposure as lead alto sax and musical director for Lionel Hampton’s big band in the early ‘80s, and even his wildest forays make room for touching hallowed jazz bases – as in one tumultuous improvisation on his original “Iddly” at Il Pozzo, which flashed references to “Freedom Jazz Dance,” “Chameleon,” “Syeeda’s Song Flute,” “Tickle Toe” and “Volunteered Slavery” along the way.

Chapin is not part of the famous musical family with the same surname.  “I’m someone from Manchester, Connecticut, who attended Phillips Academy in Andover and happened on jazz.  I remember listening to a Boston radio station that began a jazz show with a Coltrane invocation each morning; then someone gave me a Roland Kirk record by chance that changed everything.  Before that, I used to dance and jump around to music as a little kid, and I took some piano lessons like everyone at the time.  You get into things like music dirty, and then the rest of it is a process of purifying and getting down to essentials.  Underneath is this ball of magnetism you’re trying to polish and refine.”

When he entered college, Chapin was playing the saxophone and pursuing musical studies seriously.  “I began at the University of Miami, but bailed out real fast,” he recalled; then I went to Hartt College [of Music, in Connecticut] and Rutgers.  [Saxophonist/educator] Paul Jeffrey at Rutgers, really taught me the be-bop catechism; and we played gigs rather than concerts.  I never took the time to transcribe solos and cop other players.  I’ve always preferred to grab a bit of this and a bit of that,” he stressed, kneading his hands, “and make my own mud pies.”

His five years with Hampton brought further lessons.  “I think of Lionel Hampton, who I spent so much time with, and that joy he communicates is what he’s about,” said one of the few younger players who gave signs of enjoying an equally good time in front of an audience.  As the ‘80s progressed, Chapin moved more totally into personal areas, which he does not see as a deliberate change of direction.  “It was never a transformation, because the trick when you’re in a situation like a big band is to know in your own mind that you’re on your own path.  Jazz is essence expressing itself through personality, and I just started feeling that Thomas Chapin thing happening.”

At decade’s end, he discovered a means to that expression through his trio.  “A friend asked me to put something together for a mini-festival in the summer of ’89,” he recalled.  “I had a sextet at the time, and thought a trio would be a little different.  Mario and I had already played together for eight years, and Mario introduced me to Pheeroan ak Laff, our first drummer.  The same friend hooked me up with the Knitting Factory, which recorded our first gig – with Steve Johns on drums – in December ’89 and put it on Volume 3 of their anthology series.  They started Knitting Factory Works soon after that, when Mike Sarin joined the trio.  We were the label’s third signing, which gave us the forum.”

While KFW has recorded five trio CDs and allowed Chapin to craft special projects where the group is augmented by brass and (on the new album “Haywire”) strings, he has explored standards and more symmetrical originals on two Arabesque recordings.  “I hate to define things in these terms” he said, “but I have this mainstream side to me.  So I made a tape with musicians I had known for years, Ronnie Matthews and Ray Drummond.”  This led to “I’ve Got Your Number,” which was followed by the even more impressive “You Don’t Know Me,” a memorable quintet date featuring Tom Harrell that is built around the five-part “Safari Notebook” suite Chapin wrote after a trip to Cape Town and Namibia.  Because he has proven his “inside” mettle, and because his trio communicates on such a visceral level, conservative jazz fans and even jazz neophytes have begun warming to Chapin’s working band and more limit-testing music.

“It’s hard, it’s very hard to create music,” he stressed; “it’s a clean slate every night.  Yet somehow I’m here, playing music in paradise.  Our appearance at Newport last summer was a milestone for the trio, and while I didn’t realize it would be, this festival is, too.  I’ve gotten into a very intuitive area, particularly with this group, where I don’t really know what I’m doing.  I don’t want to know, because it’s a better area.”

Reprinted with permission from Bob Blumenthal

All albums previously released on Knitting Factory Records are now the sole property of and available through Akasha, Inc.