PRESS RELEASE
Los Angeles-based saxophonist Bob Reynolds is a Grammy-winning member of the instrumental group Snarky Puppy, an award-winning composer, and a prolific recording artist with ten top-selling solo albums to his credit. Widely known for his work with both Snarky and John Mayer, he has been a featured soloist with instrumentalists like Larry Carlton, Chris Botti, and Jeff Lorber and worked with a host of pop artists including Michael Bublé, Idina Menzel, Josh Groban, The 1975, and USHER.
On October 8, 2022 Bob Reynolds together with Ruslan Sirota on piano, Janek Gwizdala on bass and Gene Coye on drums gave an outstanding concert at jazz club Unterfahrt in Munich. A beautiful and energetic musical journey, which allows you to discover some already known compositions from a new perspective. The album contains a selection of the most exciting tracks from that night. The show was completely sold out but it was recorded in immersive formats, making it possible to relive the concert as if you had been there live. “During the mixing process for this album I had the opportunity to sit and listen to the whole thing as if I was in the audience that night – and what a fantastic audience it was” says Bob.
Immersive formats such as Dolby Atmos and Auro-3D allow for a more natural reproduction of instrument timbres and lead to an acoustic and atmospheric envelopment that involves the listener more emotionally into the musical performance. The concert video extends this album and literally opens the door to one of the leading performance venues for jazz in Europe. The reference quality product is manufactured in a sustainable process on demand and therefore issued in a hand selected edition to the customer.
ARTIST NOTES
“How much of what you guys do is written and how much is improvised?” I’m often asked that question after this band performs. I love it because it illustrates something we thrive on: shaping moments of collective spontaneity in ways that sound predetermined. This recording captured a lot of those moments and I’ll try to highlight a few from my perspective.
On the night of this concert we were only a few shows into a two-and-half-week tour through Europe. It was our first tour post-Covid. Our previous European tour ended abruptly in the middle of March, 2020 and subsequent attempts had been booked and canceled twice.
Days before this show, between trains three and four of a long travel day, my bag of valuables had been stolen right out from under me while I ordered a falafel in the Rotterdam train station. Fortunately, I was wearing my saxophone, passport, wallet, and phone. But my computer, cameras, microphones, musical effects pedals, the band’s book of music, our CDs and merchandise, and thousands of dollars of cash were gone in an instant.
A few stressful days and a dozen extremely helpful Dutch people later I had managed to replace the equipment I needed to perform live. I say "needed" because there’s an element to the sound of this group that feels sorely missing when it's not there, and that's the delay pedal I sometimes employ on my saxophone. Can we perform the music without it? Absolutely. Does it produce the same emotional result? Absolutely not. The beginning of “Hush” and my solo on “Unlucky” are good examples.
There’s another challenge that a band like this encounters during a tour: playing the same material night after night but trying to approach it as if playing it for the first time. The surprises are the magic that spark inspiration. But you can’t repeat a “surprise” that happened the night before. So what do you do? Our approach was to shake up the repertoire as much as possible each night so we didn’t play the same songs, or at least not in the same order, as the previous concert. This led us more and more toward abandoning setlists and relying instead on the group’s collective instinct for what song should come next. We’d choose something to start with and then it was anyone’s prerogative to steer us into the next song. This could be a piano outro that becomes an intro, a bass solo that foreshadows the next song, a saxophone or drum cadenza that sets up a tempo or vibe. All are fair game and most are represented within this set.
Closer. The adjective, not the noun, as in “come closer.” (Though sometimes it does close our set.) It’s an AABA form leading to an extended vamp. Once we hit the vamp we never return to the initial melody. Ruslan always surprises us with new harmonies underneath the second verse. Janek joins me on the bridge melody sounding more like a baritone guitar than a bass. Gene seasons with some cymbal accents but ducks out for the last verse, creating that “wait for it” moment before his big drum fill leads us into the vamp. We push and pull and stretch before Ruslan reharmonizes it into new territory. Dig how Gene and Janek brilliantly step aside for some of Rus’s lines.
Chrysalis. This is the first recorded version of this song by our group. I wrote it for Snarky Puppy when we recorded the Immigrance album. It was released as an extended album track, but I’d always wanted to explore it with this group. We’d only played it a few times prior to this and you can hear us starting to discover its shape. It isn’t programmatic music, per se, but there is something about the song’s spiraling harmony that reminds me of the metamorphosis from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly I witnessed when my young kids had butterfly kits in springtime.
Crush. Ruslan seamlessly leads us into this song from the last. His ethereal, almost spooky ornamentations set an evocative tone for the melancholy melody. Later in his solo the mood becomes almost triumphant before settling back down for mine. A highlight for me is the transition out of my solo, where Rus joins my ascending line before we return to the melody. Janek’s impromptu ending culminates in a singular moment of tension inside release.
Hush. A good example of the question I began with, the song lies in the middle but the beginning duet is almost its own thing—conceived on the spot—as is the arc of Gene’s epic drum solo to end it. My favorite moment besides those is one particular audience member’s enthusiastic response when the saxophone solo concludes (you’ll hear him). Love that energy!
Unlucky. Janek sets this one up beautifully, managing to record a loop of the bass part so he can simultaneously play the melody with me. Gene creates a great “train” vibe with brushes and Ruslan, who doesn’t always have a gorgeous piano at his disposal on our concerts, makes luxurious use of it. I accidentally step on the wrong button on my new delay pedal when I come back in. It’s longer than I’d anticipated but that’s part of the fun!
Feedback. We’ve played this song a lot over the years so the challenge is always finding new doors to open. This time it was guided by the riff Janek set up coming out of his solo. It was new to all of us and you can hear us finding it, kind of holding it and figuring where to go next. It led to a dialogue between Rus and I which had also not happened before. We didn’t know we were going to do it until we were doing it.
Outro. This is just a slice from the first set that I had to include because the vibe was too delicious. It's a perfect example of the trio’s chemistry. I dare you not to smile while you’re listening.
During the mixing process for this album I had the opportunity to sit and listen to the whole thing as if I was in the audience that night—and what a fantastic audience it was. We owe Kseniya ka*wko a huge “Thank you” for her extraordinary work recording and mixing this concert. I hope we’ve managed to capture the feeling in that room in such a way that you can enjoy it as if you were there with us. Perhaps next time you will be.
Bob Reynolds
Los Angeles, Spring 2024
releases July 5, 2024
Bob Reynolds, Saxophone
Ruslan Sirota, Piano
Janek Gwizdala, Bass
Gene Coye, Drums
Recorded on October 8 2022 at jazz club Unterfahrt Munich, Germany
All compositions by Bob Reynolds, Mufala Music ASCAP
Recording & Mixing (Stereo, Immersive): Kseniya ka*wko
Stereo Mastering: Christoph Stickel
Immersive Mastering: Ephraim Hahn
Video Directing: Edi May
Concert Production: Michael Stückl, Antonia Haseneder
Layout & Artwork: Ephraim Hahn, Jamie Breiwick
Photography: Thomas J. Krebs
Sound Format Illustrations: Hyunyoung Yang
Pure Audio Blu-ray Authoring: msm-studios, Michael T. Hoffmann
Special thanks to Mike Chadwick, Candy Dulfer, Jazzton, John de Kanter, Stefan Bock, David Merkl, Michael Hartl, Manfred Knauff, Lukas Hierl, Benny Bennett, Ira Becker, Bob Clearmountain
