DESCRIPTION:
Guitarist-Composer SEBASTIAN NOELLE Marries
Ambitious Complexity
with Emotional Lyricism on Third Album

SHELTER, Out June 3rd on Fresh Sound New Talent,
Features a Stunning, Virtuosic Quintet
with MARC MOMMAAS, MATT MITCHELL,
MATT CLOHESY & DAN WEISS

SHELTER CD RELEASE SHOW:

May 26th @ 8:30pm - Cornelia Street Cafe - New York City+

Guitarist-composer Sebastian Noelle has spent much of his life traveling the elusive path between two worlds. In life, he travels back and forth between his native Germany and his adopted home of New York City; in his art, he navigates the more fluid boundaries between the abstract and the emotional. Throughout that nomadic existence, music has provided a constant source of shelter, an idea that unifies the wide-ranging music on Noelle’s third CD.

On Shelter (due out June 3rd via Fresh Sound New Talent), Noelle leads a stellar quintet that brings together some of the most forward-thinking and limitless musicians in modern jazz: saxophonist Marc Mommaas (Amina Figarova, Armen Donelian), pianist Matt Mitchell (Dave Douglas, Tim Berne), bassist Matt Clohesy (Seamus Blake, Darcy James Argue, Donny McCaslin), and drummer Dan Weiss (Rudresh Mahanthappa, Dave Binney).

Noelle’s own impressive credentials since arriving in New York in 2002 include more than a decade with Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, the BMI Jazz Composer’s Workshop Orchestra, the Chris Potter Big Band, the Aaron Irwin Quintet, and the New York Jazzharmonic.

The compositions on Shelter spotlight Noelle’s far-reaching interests, bringing together disparate musical influences, inspiration from documentary film and German literature, and his studies of North Indian rhythms. The album’s ten compositions also manage the tricky feat of melding ambitious complexity with emotional communication.

“A lot of times musicians these days deal in ideas that are abstract and sometimes mathematical,” Noelle says. “I find that very inspiring and my music can go to those places, but the essence of what I want to express with my music is something relatable and concrete and human.”

Shelter opens with “Seven Up,” which shares its title with the first of a famed series of British documentaries that follow a group of children throughout their lives at seven-year intervals beginning in 1964. The series’ latest iteration, 56 Up, was released in 2012. The idea of steering between two worlds is addressed most directly by the album’s second tune, “Home in a Strange Land,” which contrasts two different rhythms against one another.

“Another Spring” and “Day Off” boast lyrical melodies that Noelle wrote expressly to contrast the more complex and intricate lines of some of his other tunes. The latter is breezy and relaxed, the former lilting but laced with melancholy, capturing the ambiguity of its title – “Another Spring” could be celebrating the rebirth that comes with a new year, or resignedly shrugging at the onset of more of the same.

The album’s most sharp-edged and aggressive piece, “Rolling With the Punches” erupts with a distorted roar and progresses with a tumultuous ferocity before giving way to a quieter, more meditative finale. The off-kilter rhythms of “Unlikely Heroes” is Noelle’s homage to a certain obscure genius who remains not only unsung but undeterred in their particular eccentricities – names like player-piano composer Conlon Nancarrow and Brazilian multi-instrumentalist and composer Hermeto Pascoal.

The placid but dark-hued loveliness of “Mirror Lake” grows more agitated as the piece progresses, while “Ahir Bhairav” is propelled by the raga for which it’s named. North Indian rhythms are a shared interest of Noelle, Mommaas and Weiss. The guitarist began studying the tradition while a student at Boston’s New England Conservatory and continues through performances through Brooklyn Raga Massive and an ongoing collaboration with clarinetist Shankar Tucker.

Another dichotomy is explored in “Naphta vs Settembrini,” this one a clash of conflicting philosophies, as embodied by the Socratic dialogue between the titular characters in Thomas Mann’s novel “The Magic Mountain.” Finally, “You’ll Never Know” draws inspiration from British fusion great Allan Holdsworth’s unique voicings while winkingly acknowledging a friend’s valuable romantic advice.