Honey And Salt: Music Inspired by the Poetry of Carl Sandburg

https://soundcloud.com/bk-music-pr/fog-matt-wilson

I suppose the jazz drummer Matt Wilson occasionally plays straightahead jazz gigs. But he is certainly not afraid of casting a wide musical net. It takes a lot to get me to listen to Christmas music, for example, but Matt’s Christmas Tree-O was too good to pass up, and an invitation to play in our studio revealed a musician who was smart and funny as well as talented. Now he’s about to release an album called Honey And Salt: Music Inspired by the Poetry of Carl Sandburg. On it, he leads a virtuoso quintet with special guests reading Sandburg’s work; those readers include Jack Black,

e-new-trio/">Christian McBride, Bill Frisell, and others. The album comes out on August 25, but you can hear the track “Fog” right now, and it’s a quietly stunning duet between Matt Wilson and the great poet, who, having been dead for 50 years now, was in no position to decline.  Sandburg’s recorded voice, reading one of his most famous texts, is heard in a kind of call-and-response with Matt’s drum kit (which sounds like it’s been tuned almost to the breaking point) – and if you thought the drum kit was not capable of melody, well, listen to how his drumming mirrors the poet’s voice, in both rhythm and in the actual shape of the line. At the very end, a moment of magic: the voice and the drum kit play in unison, and they really are “playing” the same tune.
Matt Wilson’s band plays at the Jazz Standard in NYC on September 19 and 20.