I love the Saxophone/Bass/Drums tradition pioneered by Sonny Rollins and Ornette Coleman, and developed by many others, one of my favorites being Joe Henderson, Ron Carter and Al Foster. I’ve been playing a lot of trio over the years, and four different groups have become regular outlets for me. The newest is the group on my most recent CD as a leader, “Time Being,” featuring Jeff “Tain” Watts and Robert Hurst. On the recording we explore my original music, a couple of standards, and a variety of rhythmic adventures I called sculptures, where we experiment with playing in different tempos simultaneously.
Time Being:
https://timarmacost.bandcamp.com/album/time-being
Armacost/Lepore/Petrosino is also a relatively new group. We have been playing regular gigs in Brooklyn, on Tuesdays and then Sundays since 2017. We were invited to Khartoum, Sudan in December of 2018, and were deeply impressed with the musical culture there. We learned some Sudanese melodies, and included them on our recording, “Khartoum.” We also tried for the first time bringing a social activist perspective to the fundraising for the disc – we included donations to Al Sudaniya Mentoring in our Indiegogo campaign. Political turmoil led to the cancellation of our second tour, but things are settling into a better place now, and we are eager to return to Khartoum.
Here is the link for Al Sudaniya Mentoring – https://alsudaniyamentoring.org/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8OB25mdBNg
In Trio is celebrating the release of its second recording, “Cascade,” on Centaur Records. Harvie S, Christian Finger and I have been playing together for many years now. We have moved from playing mostly known material, to focusing on original music in the last couple of years, and I have been taking my first stabs at using some electronics with the alto flute, to create a different kind of harmonic atmosphere. The music for our third CD is in the can, and we’ll be mastering it for release in early 2023.
Finally, Intercontinental Jazz Trio is into our third decade. This is my longest running association, with musical brothers Shingo Okudaira and Joris Teepe. We started with a regular gig in NYC in the mid-1990’s, have toured three times in Japan, three times in Europe, and are due for more gigs in the US! Two recordings are out, both made in Holland, so it’s time to record in Japan.