TENOR TRIAGE
release date: september 13, 2019
About TENOR TRIAGE
Brooklyn’s Tenor Triage unites the saxophone camaraderie of Michael Eaton, James Brandon Lewis, and Sean Sonderegger into a freewheeling and outward bound spin on a classic matchup. The band’s chemistry melds harmolodics and firey, hymnic free jazz to heavy hitting groove and gritty polyphony. “Tenor Triage”, outlines their vision through original music plus a deep cut composition by Dewey Redman, joined by bassist Brad Jones and drummer Calvin Weston (both alumni of Ornette Coleman’s ensembles). The tenors dedicate “Tenor Triage” to their late bandmate, harmolodic guitar master Bern Nix.
In August 2015, saxophonist Michael Eaton co-produced and conducted a performance of John Coltrane’s seminal free jazz composition, “Ascension”, at Brooklyn’s Shapeshifter Lab. Out of the maelstrom of Coltrane’s masterwork, one aspect to emerge was the sensibilities shared by tenor saxophonist section of Eaton, James Brandon Lewis, and Sean Sonderegger.
Making note of their teamwork, Eaton recalled Lewis and Sonderegger the following year to record “I and Thou”, a blazing three tenor showdown that served as an album highlight for Eaton’s “Dialogical” on Destiny Records. The time
In 2017, the three convened in May as a band at the Lower East Side’s Rockwood Music Hall. The evening’s focus was to bring together alumni of Ornette Coleman for a very special concert, with guitarist Bern Nix and drummer Calvin Weston, both alumni of Coleman’s Prime Time band, playing in the rhythm section. This version of the ensemble proved to be short lived with the untimely passing of Bern Nix less than a month later.
Finally in November 2017, the three saxophonists documented their interplay at Mission Sound Studios in Williamsburg as Tenor Triage, the current chordless edition of the band heard here.