“One of the essential groups to emerge from the nineteen-eighties East Village scene, the Jazz Passengers celebrate their thirtieth anniversary with the release of a bighearted, satirical new record, “Still Life with Trouble.” The band’s origins can be traced to the pit of the Big Apple Circus, where its founders, the saxophonist Roy Nathanson and the trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, forged a lifelong friendship and a musical collaboration that soon led to a stint with their like-minded downtown predecessors the Lounge Lizards. The Passengers’ new album, like its previous efforts, is marked by a central contrast: breezy, comic vocals mingling with beautiful, unpredictable melodies and abstract harmonies that suggest an underlying seriousness. This show features most of the stellar original band members, including Bill Ware, on vibraphone, and E. J. Rodriguez, on drums and percussion, but the core of the group’s sound is still the warm interplay between Nathanson’s frenzied sax solos and Fowlkes’s groove-filled trombone lines.”
Jim’s skill at getting the word out to the right media in the right way at the right time has resulted in my enjoying audiences ranging from a full house to standing room only. I recommend him highly.
