Featured Artist: Saxophone Cartel

CD Title: Caught In The Act

Year: 2005

Record Label: Sundog Productions

Style: Contemporary Jazz

Musicians: Matt Cashdollar (alto, tenor, flute), Michael Eaton (tenor sax), Colin Renick (baritone, bass saxophone, bass clarinet), Benjamin Himpel (tenor & baritone saxophone), Joshua Goldberg (alto sax & clarinet), Ariel Alexander (soprano sax)

Review:

Saxophone Cartel, a diaphanous sextet brings about classic reed forms of sounds as well as an array of modern jazz stylizations and improvising passages. Caught InThe Act expresses a motley and capacious inventive mastery of reed-instruments. Euphonies grade from European jazz shapes to twisted, airy and fancy soundscapes.

The free nuances, attacks and jazz accent skills of these six young artists are top rate, whiffing and huffing with a natural simplicity and zealous receptivity. Reed impulses lead and drift with every member’s breath. From “David Miller presents” to “Creation” the tracks hook you into its fashion without swamping you. The reticulation can be tonal plus assuasive in a deck of atonal twinkles.

Soprano saxophonist Ariel Alexander rips through a rather laborious mishmash of free-figures and improvised licks encouraged by frenzied Cashdollar, Eaton, Goldberg, Himpel and Renick’s soaring rhythms.  Saxophone Cartel’s appeal is cored within its cooperative blend to inter-cross heterogeneous genres into a peculiar musical aura that bears a manifold amazement.

Although the band is rooted under a classical polyphonic heritage, they visit contemporary pieces with unique musical configurations. The improvs are accented with impetuous concourses as riffs and new sounds emanate fluently. Caught InThe Act is well worth hearing offering a great spotlight to six talented artists with a high level of musicianship. We certainly will hear more about their craft.

Tracks:

David Miller presents..., Don't Look Back, Crook, Minstrels, Passacaglia, Ring Shout, If I Knew, The Old Man, Mr. Smith, Newton's Nightmare, La Cosa Latina, Key of J.B, Creation

Artist's Website: http://www.saxcartel.com

Reviewed by: Dr. Ana Isabel Ordonez

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