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Dayna Stephens Quartet: Right Now! Live At The Village Vanguard

By Dan McClenaghan
November 5, 2020
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Dayna Stephens Quartet: Right Now! Live At The Village Vanguard

New York City's Village Vanguard has a history. Founded by Max Gordon in 1935 and, after his passing in 1989, operated by his wife Lorraine until her death in 2018, the venue became famous for launching jazz careers and hosting the recordings of more than a hundred jazz albums, including saxophonist

Sonny Rollins

saxophone
b.1930

" data-original-title="" title="">Sonny Rollins' A Night At The Village Vanguard (Blue Note, 1957), pianist

Bill Evans

piano
1929 - 1980

" data-original-title="" title="">Bill Evans' Sunday At The Village Vanguard (Riverside, 1961) and saxophonist

John Coltrane

saxophone
1926 - 1967

" data-original-title="" title="">John Coltrane's Live At The Village Vanguard (Impulse, 1962).

Reedman

Dayna Stephens

saxophone, tenor

" data-original-title="" title="">Dayna Stephens, Downbeat Magazine's 2019 "Rising Star Tenor Saxophonist," adds his voice to the Vanguard sound with the two-CD set Right Now! Live At The Village Vanguard, with his all-star quartet, featuring pianist

Aaron Parks

drums
b.1983

" data-original-title="" title="">Aaron Parks, bassist

Ben Street

bass

" data-original-title="" title="">Ben Street and drummer

Gregory Hutchinson

drums
b.1970

" data-original-title="" title="">Gregory Hutchinson.

There is something about the sound of the place which is hard to pin down—warm and intimate and right-there-in-your-face immediate; Stephens and his group immerse themselves in the Vanguard vibe, laying down eleven of the leader's compositions—along with pianist Park's "Planting Flowers"—with a relaxed and timeless group dynamic, neither dated nor modernistic (for the most part), but music for right now, from guys who sound like they have been working together for fifteen years.

Stephens has developed his own sound, drawing seeming influence from saxophonists

Lester Young

saxophone
1909 - 1959

" data-original-title="" title="">Lester Young and

Stan Getz

saxophone, tenor
1927 - 1991

" data-original-title="" title="">Stan Getz—a cool, smooth, confident articulation wrapped in the sometimes edgy, always intricate rhythms of his on-stage cohorts. A surprise which pulls the sound in a modern direction is his use of the EWI (electronic wind instrument) on two tunes, "Radio-Active Earworm," which sounds like a twenty-second century piece of religious music, commissioned for performance in a cathedral on Ganymede (recorded, for the time being, in New York City) and the show-closer, "Blakonian Groove," a cyborg dance-floor piece, wrapping up yet another fine Village Vanguard recording.

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Track Listing

CD 1: Smoking Gun; Tarifa; Ran; Contagious; Radio-Active Earworm; Faith Leap; Lesson One. CD 2: Loosy Goosy; Planting Flowers; JFK International; You Are Me Blues; The Beginning Of An Endless Happy Monday; Blakonian Groove.

Personnel

Dayna Stephens

saxophone, tenor

Aaron Parks

drums

Ben Street

bass

Gregory Hutchinson

drums

Additional Instrumentation

Dayna Stephens: saxophones, EWI14000S.

Album information

Title: Right Now! Live At The Village Vanguard | Year Released: 2020 | Record Label: Contagious Music

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