Edition Redux/Edition XL

Many thanks to Bill Meyer for his February 27 review in Dusted magazine of “Broadcast Transformer” by Edition Redux.  Though it’s always gratifying to get a positive response to the work, Bill’s recognition and demonstration of how my interest in cinema has impacted the music with Erez Dessel, Lily Finnegan, and Beth McDonald is especially significant.  Link to the complete review here: https://dustedmagazine.tumblr.com/post/776662319567699968/edition-redux-broadcast-transformer

You can order copies of “Broadcast Transformer” from Catalytic Sound (https://catalyticsound.com/albums/broadcast-transformer/) and Audiographic Records (https://editionredux.bandcamp.com/album/broadcast-transformer)

The quartet with Beth, Erez, and Lily has been expanded to a sextet that includes Josh Berman and Nick Macri for a special project entitled Edition XL.  The first half of my 2025 has been focused on composing material for the group and developing it in rehearsal for an August 1st and 2nd appearance at the Green Mill in Chicago.  During the first three meetings to work on the music the band has tackled 5 new pieces, each with 3 overlaid charts which can be shifted from composition to composition.

Collection 1 consisted of 3 pieces deeply influenced by Duke Ellington’s brilliance at creating absolute clarity, despite density of parts, in his later work.  The 2nd set of music has been particularly affected by the “Cellar Door Sessions” (2005) by Miles Davis (with Gary Bartz, Jack DeJohnette, Michael Henderson, Keith Jarrett, John McLaughlin, and Airto Moreira).  Though the album “Live Evil” (1971) was culled from disks 5 and 6 of the box, being able to hear six complete sets of music by the band and how they reinvented only 7 compositions over the course of a half dozen hours that gave me the insight I needed to generate this aesthetic for the XL project; particularly how to work with 2-bar cells for bass parts and how thoroughly a different tempo can alter the nature of a composition, thereby changing the nature of the improvising the follows it.

Each rehearsal has taught me more about what works and doesn’t for this new compositional strategy.  It was at the session on Sunday, March 2nd, that I realized the correct balance between combinations of parts to get us closer to the “density with clarity” that Ellington achieved.  In the second rehearsal (on February 26th) I realized that my approach to the composing for the “free funk” triptych was all wrong: over-written and over-organized.  So, four days later, the first chart, which was three pages long, had been cut down to one.  This realization freed up the composing process for the 2nd piece, enabling me to get the primary, secondary, and foundation parts finished in an afternoon.  Copying the charts out and without mistakes was another story… All thanks to Beth McDonald for catching the errors!

[photo of Edition Redux by Alex Inglizian]