ALBANY, NY (JULY 29, 2024): The City of Albany has announced the 2024 Albany Riverfront Jazz Festival Lineup. The festival, scheduled for September 14, 2024, at Albany’s Corning Preserve Boat Launch, will feature 5 acts spanning a diverse mix of contemporary jazz and improvised music.
Artists slated to appear include Albany’s own Bright Dog Red, “the best kept secret in the Avant-Jazz underground” (Brad Cohan), singer and bandleader Melanie Charles, celebrated for distinctively engaging jazz, soul, and R&B, Snacktime, the Philadelphia area band known for blending soul, funk, punk, rock, jazz, hip-hop, and R&B influences, Roosevelt Collier, the pedal steel virtuoso who mixes blues, gospel, rock, and funk, and headliner Nate Smith, renowned for his collaborations with leading figures in jazz (e.g., Pat Metheny, Dave Holland, Chris Potter, José James, John Patitucci, Ravi Coltrane) and popular music (e.g., Brittany Howard, Emily King, Van Hunt) among many others. Smith’s 2x Grammy®-nominated debut album, KINFOLK blends his original jazz compositions with R&B, pop, and hip-hop.
Ropeadope recording artists Bright Dog Red (BDR) are delighted to join the festival’s carefully curated line up. The Albany based collective of improvising musicians, fuses free improvisation, electronica, jazz, hip hop, psychedelia, and noise music. The version of the ensemble set to appear includes drummer and band leader Joe Pignato, tenor saxophonist Mike LaBombard, electronic musician Cody Davies, bassist Anthony Berman, guitarist Tyreek Jackson, and rapper and poet, Matt Coonan.
BDR’s appearance marks the group’s debut at the festival. Pignato commented on the opportunity the booking represents, “BDR doesn’t often get to play our home city. To be added to this festival, which we have attended in the past, with this particular line-up, is really meaningful! Bright Dog Red will open the festival proceedings at 12:30 PM.
About the Festival: For 21 years, the City of Albany Jazz Festival has featured a wealth of jazz greats, critically acclaimed up-and-coming artists, and local favorites at the area’s most spectacular venues. This all-day concert features world-class music, vendors, great food & beverages, and fireworks after the final act. The Jazz Festival is an event for all ages- and admission is free!
Parking: $8 flat fee parking is available at the Riverfront Garage (2 Columbia St.). Handicap parking and EV charging spaces are available at this location, for more information on parking options, visit www.parkalbany.com
Location: Corning Preserve Boat Launch, Albany, NY (rain location, under the 787 Underpass at Colonie and Water Streets).
Admission: Free
March 13, 2024: Bright Dog Red (BDR), the alt-jazz, genre-fluid ensemble from Albany, New York, will release two albums simultaneously, Bad Magic and Hegemonitized, on April 26, 2024. The double release marks the ensemble’s sixth and seventh albums since signing with Ropeadope in 2018.
Despite being hailed as the “best kept secret in the avant-jazz underground” (JazzTimes), BDR continues to produce music with a fervent prolificacy. After releasing five albums in four and a half years, the “celebrated group” (Bandcamp) began working on what would become Bad Magic. As with earlier BDR projects, Bad Magic began with a set of themes to inspire the individual contributors, the prevalence of misinformation, antiscientific thinking, and other forms of deception subverting online platforms and cultural and political discourses. The initial sessions for Bad Magic produced some tracks that were more aggressive in nature, that had a harder edge for the “free-form jazz, funk, rock, and hip-hop” ensemble (Glide Magazine). Those tracks became Hegemonitized, a collection of material reflecting yet another, albeit closely related, set of themes, intractable problems such as corporate rapacity, hostility toward collectivism, and strident political discord.
Bad Magic features 10 tracks, recorded over a period spanning early 2022 to late 2023. Hegemonitizedfeatures 9 tracks, recorded over that same time period. In addition to evincing the group’s prolificacy, both albums represent a range of stylistic musings “impossible to pin down” (JazzTimes).
Bright Dog Red’s "proudly unanchored improvisation" (Downbeat) has been widely lauded for “blending a potpourri of styles, while presenting a sonic personality and conceptual direction…propelled by gripping narratives of sociopolitical struggle” (Downbeat). Described as “part Ornette Coleman and Prime Time, part Lounge Lizards, part A Tribe Called Quest” (JazzTimes), others have compared the group to “Mahavishnu Orchestra meets Digable Planets” (Paul Schulman), “Romantic Warrior era Return to Forever” (Rimas e Batidas), and “electronic Ahmad Jamal" (Don Lucoff).
Founded by Joe Pignato, BDR features an alternating cadre of contributors. In addition to Pignato (drums, percussion, concepts), Bad Magicand Hegemonitized feature Tim Lefebvre (electric bass), Tyreek Jackson (electric bass and guitar), Cody Davies (sounds), Mike LaBombard (tenor saxophone, effects, keys), Anthony Berman (acoustic and electric bass), Matt Coonan (poetry, freestyling, voice), and newest member of the collective, Martín Loyato (trumpet and flugelhorn).
For additional information, interview requests, or other inquiries, contact fabian@ropeadope.com.
March 29, 2023: The nominees for New York’s Capital Region Thomas Edison Music Awards have been announced. Bright Dog Red has been nominated in the Jazz Artist of the Year category. This nomination marks the ensemble’s second recognition in this category and the group's fifth overall nomination. The group’s 2021 live album release, "In Vivo", the group's, 2020 release, “Somethin' Comes Along,” and the group's 2019 release, “How’s by You?” were also nominated for Album of the Year in 2022, 2021, and 2020 respectively.
Known locally as the Eddies, the awards nomination process involved many members of the Capital Region music community, which represents Albany, Schenectady, Troy, and the surrounding areas. Nominating committee members included local artists, members of the media and others working in the music industry. Roughly 100 local members of the music community have been invited to vote for winners among the nominees.
For additional information, interview requests, or other inquiries, contact fabian@ropeadope.com.
Bright Dog Red (BDR), an improvising collective from Albany, New York, will release Under the Porch on May 20, 2022. Under the Porch, marks the ensemble’s fifth album since signing withRopeadope in 2018.
Under the Porch features twelve tracks, recorded part by part, layer by layer, edit after edit, over a period spanning late 2020 to late 2021. The album, arguably BDR’s most accessible to date, features a new take on the ensemble’s “signature sound” a mix of “free-form jazz, funk, rock, and hip-hop” (Glide Magazine).
Long recognized for their “improvisation that defies categorization” (Dan Ouellette), Under the Porch represents a departure from BDR’s typical approach to production.
Travel and gathering restrictions imposed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic prevented the band from meeting to record in studio, as they had done on previous releases. With the players scattered in disparate locations, the group began exploring a manner of production that had long interested BDR’s drummer and leader Joe Pignato.
"I thought it would be interesting to put grooves at the fore of a BDR album, to make them the foundations for the production process. So, I recorded improvised drum tracks, thinking they could serve as structures or points of departure for the other musicians."
Pignato sent those foundations to individual musicians within the ensemble, based on who he thought best suited the nascent direction of the music. When the individual parts came back, Pignato integrated them into the emerging project, sometimes exactly as they had been recorded, other times making edits or loops, and other times chopping and layering them to create entirely new ideas.
In some ways, Under the Porch, might be viewed as a counterpoint to BDR’s critically acclaimed live album, In Vivo, released in 2021. That album featured a single set, some 60 minutes of completely improvised music, captured live, end-to-end, with minimal editing.
Bright Dog Red, celebrated for “sublimely marrying jazz with hip-hop, funk, and electronic music" (JazzTimes), has long been “a fixture on the NYC jazz and improvisation scene” (Jazz Journal). The group’s "proudly unanchored improvisation" (Downbeat) has been described as “part Ornette Coleman and Prime Time, part Lounge Lizards, part A Tribe Called Quest” (JazzTimes). Others have compared the group to “Mahavishnu Orchestra meets Digable Planets” (Paul Schulman), “Romantic Warrior era Return to Forever” (Rimas e Batidas), and “electronic Ahmad Jamal" (Don Lucoff).
Founded by Joe Pignato, BDR is comprised of a rotating cast of players. In addition to Pignato (drums, percussion, concepts), Under the Porch features Eric Person(soprano and alto saxophones, flute, effects), Tim Lefebvre (electric bass), Tyreek Jackson (electric bass and guitar), Cody Davies (sounds), Mike LaBombard (tenor saxophone, effects), Anthony Berman (acoustic bass), and Matt Coonan (poetry, freestyling, voice).
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Album Teaser: https://youtu.be/VZzi9jUvkVQ.
Under the Porch May 20, 2022 on Ropeadope.
For additional information, interview requests, or other media inquiries, contact fabian@ropeadope.com.
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