Blending analogue keyboard textures with the horns of trumpetist Ralph Alessi and saxophonists Peter Epstein and Tony Malaby, pianist James Carney weaves elements of jazz, rock, funk, classical and world music into a tightly-orchestrated soundscape.
– Mark Werlin
Green-Wood, the James Carney Group’s first album, received many accolades for Carney’s distinctive aesthetic – one which, in Troy Collins words, “blends classic modernism with knowing futurism.”
Like Green-Wood, Ways & Means explores the border regions of styles and genres, from jazz, rock, and funk to classical and world music: Carney: “The differences between approaches, styles, and eras of music are almost meaningless to me, and in fact I see more of a continuum between everything than I ever did before.”
In Ways & Means, Carney further pursues his vision of jazz as virtual cinema. From the outset, Ways & Means (a Chamber Music America commission) was designed as a movie in sound:
“I really did think about a 70-minute dramatic narrative film, and how the individual compositions would intertwine, because there is a different sort of approach with film scoring, in that the music should always complement and enhance the onscreen action and emotion. I wanted to create music that could function as the complete score for an edited sequence of images – music that would have themes, sound effects, atmosphere, shock value, drones, periods of time with no established tempo, and dynamic range surprises that are usually a component of scores. And I continually visualized the end result during the process. I didn’t think of a specific story, but I did ponder and focus on abstracted collages of scenes from many films I admired in the past.
But in traditional film scoring it’s rare to have the music be jazz-based, or improvisational in nature, and usually when it is, it’s a single or specific type of jazz like bebop or ragtime, big band or cool. And, almost always, the music becomes sliced and diced. When I scored projects in the past, they never featured group improvisation, and they never used all the sonic tools I now have at my disposal. It’s not just blending electronic instruments [an Alesis Andromeda analog synth and a Fender Rhodes] and acoustic instruments in a jazz context – it’s the ability of my band members to coax very unique and sometimes completely unpredictable sounds from their instruments because of their musicianship and their open aesthetic. And most importantly, it’s the blend of all of those sounds, intervals, chords, and their related partials that I wanted to exploit, coming from both the composed passages and the open sections. You can’t plan it, and you really can’t orchestrate it, either.”
James Carney Group
James Carney, acoustic and electric pianos, analog synthesizer, glockenspiel
Peter Epstein, soprano & alto sax
Ralph Alessi, trumpet
Tony Malaby, tenor sax
Josh Roseman, trombone
Chris Lightcap, contrabass
Mark Ferber, drums
Tracklist
Please note that the below previews are loaded as 44.1 kHz / 16 bit.Total time: 01:08:10
Additional information
| Label | |
|---|---|
| SKU | SGLSA15802 |
| Qualities | DSD 512 fs, DSD 256 fs, DSD 128 fs, DSD 64 fs, DXD 24 Bit, FLAC 192 kHz, FLAC 96 kHz |
| Channels | |
| Artists | |
| Composers | |
| Genres | |
| Mastering | Mastered by Graemme Brown at Zen Mastering |
| Mixing | Mixed by John Raham at Ogre Studios, Vancouver BC |
| Instruments | Contrabass, Saxophone, Synthesizer, Trombone, Drums, Piano, Trumpet |
| Original Recording Format | |
| Recording Engineer | Andy Taub |
| Recording Location | Recorded at Brooklyn Recording, Brooklyn NY, September 11-12, 2008. |
| Release Date | June 6, 2024 |
Press reviews
Pop Matters
Jazz today is art music, and as such it is inevitably a minority taste. But James Carney makes the case that jazz remains an art that is both up-to-the-minute and bracing, a form that could hold your attention like Slumdog Millionaire while still enriching you inside. With artists like Carney at the helm, who knows? The jazz renaissance seems always at hand.
AllAboutJazz
With Ways & Means, keyboardist James Carney aggressively confronts this century’s first major economic crisis. Conceived as “a virtual film score—not reliant on any images to tell its tale,” Carney and his group stir a bitch’s brew, adding scoops of squawks and shrieks, and doses of well-chosen space, projecting a picture of turmoil, clatter and decay. Sweeping cinematically from the bray of group improvisation to solo, often mournful, statements of individual experience, the Carney Group covers the full spectrum of the recession and its impact at global, national, regional and familial levels.
AllAboutJazz
Steadily winding their way through this episodic suite, Carney’s ensemble evinces an array of moods, ranging from austere to ardent. (…)
A slightly more reserved and cohesive endeavor than Carney’s previous record, Green-Wood (Songlines, 2007), Ways & Means embodies the singular focus of the best film scores—a luminous statement from one of today’s up and coming new composers.
New York Times
“Ways & Means” (Songlines), an artfully layered new album by the keyboardist and composer James Carney, comes by its cinematic quality deliberately. Most of the music on the album was written with moving pictures in mind: Mr. Carney, having recently finished a film festival commission, was inspired to keep exploring. He wrote six pieces for an adaptable septet, which collectively improvised three more. The results flicker across a spectrum of hue and mood, with pockets of insightful solo commentary from the trumpeter Ralph Alessi, the trombonist Josh Roseman and the saxophonists Peter Epstein and Tony Malaby. It’s a chamber effort, rich in texture Mr. Carney plays analog synthesizer and Fender Rhodes as well as acoustic piano but it also feels at times like a pop soundtrack, in a good way.
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