Jamie Saft, Steve Swallow and Bobby Previte Team Up for “The New Standard”
Three jazz greats — Jamie Saft, Steve Swallow and Bobby Previte — prove that excellent music doesn’t always take long to make.
The trio’s first record, The New Standard, was recorded in about three hours in an upstate New York studio. Saft, who composed seven of the record’s 10 tracks, had high praise for bassist Swallow, who has played with Gary Burton, Art Farmer, Chico Hamilton, Stan Getz, Steve Kuhn, Carla Bley and more.
“Steve has the deepest intuition found so rarely these days. It was as if I could go ANYWHERE and Steve was standing there waiting for me with arms outstretched. A true master!”
Swallow and drummer Previte have a long history of playing together, and Saft and Swallow initially met over a conversation about espresso, facilitated by Previte.
While the record features some compositions, Previte said that much of the album came together spontaneously. “Some tunes were completely improvised, some were brought in by Jamie but I think even he would agree they were sketches, really. He’d just tell Steve the harmonic rhythm, or we’d discuss it for a second, literally, and we were off! All first takes.”
Pretty cool. Here’s something even cooler — video of vinyl lacquers of the record being cut:
The New Standard is available on vinyl, of course, CD and digital formats (iTunes and Amazon MP3).
The New Standard Track List:
- Clarissa
- Minor Soul
- Step Lively
- Clearing
- Trek
- The New Standard
- I See No Leader
- Blue Shuffle
- All Things to All People
- Surrender the Chaise
