January by Paul Silbergleit

In this current jazz world where we musicians so prevalently work on a freelance basis, playing in many different configurations with numerous colleagues, I’m particularly happy to call this lineup the Paul Silbergleit Quartet whenever we have the chance to converge. I’ve been on the Milwaukee scene for decades now myself, while Todd is one of the top flight drummers in that famous jazz town of Chicago (and we’re lucky he’s inclined to make it up to Wisconsin so often to join us!). Clay cut his teeth as a bassist in his hometown of Albuquerque, and landed in Milwaukee about six years ago after stints in Denver and New York City, immediately becoming an invaluable addition to our musical community. And Eric is someone who my contemporaries and I saw grow from college student to college teacher, emerging as an excellent younger-generation saxophonist who was musically and personally right on the same page with us.

After many nights of this unit playing together, most frequently at Caroline’s Jazz Club and the Jazz Estate, it was high time to document our collective music making. It was even more high time for me personally, not having released an album in quite a while, to share these tunes of mine with the world. A quick word on the selections: JANUARY seemed like the right title for this lively-side jazz waltz, which was conceived of with great spontaneity one day and played right away that night, after just a momentary description to my bandmates at the time, no rehearsal and nothing on paper. ODE TO EMMET RAY is a reference to the lead character in the Woody Allen film Sweet and Lowdown, a jazz guitarist of yesteryear who was always considered second best in the world, due to the concurrent presence of Django Reinhardt—but for the record, my tune is a tribute to Emmet the person more than Emmet the musician. It’s based, in a somewhat off-the-beaten-path borrowing of chord structure, on the harmonic progression to “I’ll See You in my Dreams” (which plays during the end credits of the film). QUIET ANGEL was written in reference to someone I knew—not necessarily someone who should be over-simply characterized as “quiet,” but certainly an angel. PAULY THE PIRATE is another title that just seemed right, capturing the spirit of this energetic Caribbean-flavored number (besides being in the great jazz tradition of naming tunes after oneself!). IF I SHOULD LOSE YOU represents the band’s way of simply relaxing and playing on a favorite piece of standard repertoire.

THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE is a bit of a biblical reference, pertaining to the things one can’t un-know after biting into certain apples. As some jazz insiders might surmise, BACK TO SOMEWHERE is a play on the title of the great old standard “Out of Nowhere,” one of the very first tunes I learned years ago, and the harmonic basis for this one. Our present rendition of MY NEW ATTITUDE is a new twist on a brisk older tune of mine that was actually the title track of my last album. The lively ROUND LAKE and the lovely UNSPOKEN are contributions from Eric, along with his brilliant arrangement of the Michel Legrand classic THE SUMMER KNOWS, turned here from sultry ballad to power-swinger, and geared to serve as an exhilarating drum feature (with or without an actual drum solo).

Thanks for listening, and I hope you’ll enjoy the music in much the same way as if you’d joined us for a night at the club!

Paul Silbergleit, May 2019

Paul Silbergleit, a longtime mainstay of the Milwaukee-area jazz scene, is a straight-ahead guitarist, bandleader, composer, arranger, educator, and author. He has appeared with such notable artists as Benny Golson, Jack McDuff, Phil Woods, Richie Cole, Tierney Sutton, Melvin Rhyne, Brian Lynch, and David Hazeltine, and is on the faculty of the acclaimed Milwaukee Jazz Institute.

paulsilbergleit.com