Gates of Tolerance by Dave Nugent

I've always found his drumming extremely innovative. Given the freedom to assemble my own group, I also knew that I wanted guest saxophonists on the date. I narrowed it down to Ray Downey and Paul Sorensen--long time friends who guided me when I was first starting out. I've always loved the sound of 3 saxes, so that was another motivation for having Ray and Paul play. The tunes we play on together are a nice addition to this CD. The full ensemble rehearsed one week before the concert and played live two nights previous to the show.

With Halloween 2004 set firmly in place for the concert debut, I tried to write at least one tune per month that would apply to this project. But most of my time was spent on an electronica album. It wasn't until mid-May that the looming deadline struck me and I began to switch gears. Ray Downey's input was invaluable to the charts I had written, for the ones in progress, and for the tunes I needed to write. Come On In was originally written as an electronica piece. It's the one tune that I actually composed a bass line for and provided specific direction to Blake for the piano part. It's kind of my tribute to an ECM sound. It's All A Dream is a nice happy tune with a straight ahead jazz feel. About his tune Steak-out Paul Sorensen says: I basically wanted to have an image for this tune that implied fun, food, party outdoors, and was tasty! Instead of a "Police" image with "stake-out" I changed the spelling to reflect the former image. Play-on words, if you will. To have a little interplay between the horns in the melody line was in keeping with the fun idea, then the coming together at the end of the line signified being with good friends. I play alto, Paul is on tenor and Ray on baritone. O.K. Here We Go is a tune based on major 7th chords. It has a different sound reminiscent of Charles Lloyd. It's the only tune that I play tenor on. Southside Steps is a modal tune written by Ray Downey. I remember this tune from 1980 when I used to watch Ray's group Geobopological Survey Team. It's a great addition to the CD. I play soprano, Paul's on tenor and Ray plays baritone. If It Hadn't Been For You was written probably seven years ago, but I never finished the melody. This concert provided the occasion to complete the tune, spice up the changes, and turn it from swing to a latin feel right before I counted it off. I based the tune on the jazz standard show tune sound and form. African Chant In F Minor, another Sorensen tune, was written "to pay homage to the master John Coltrane...The real African music to me is based upon this pentatonic type blues structure. Harmonies and intervals predominantly use the interval of a fourth. The chant is a sort of wailing either for the celebration of an event such as a successful hunt, or marriage into the family (happy), or a religious ritual or marking of an annual event such as the new year (serious or joyful) The same chant may be used to mark a sad event also such as death of a child. A coming together in music to express life! The minor key does not necessarily imply sadness as we "Westerners" like to think, rather the use of major and minor tonalities is mixed and used together to produce a colorful soundscape in this music."-Paul Sorensen. I play soprano, Paul's on tenor and Ray's on baritone.

Thanks to Jud Sherwood and The Jazz Project, my loving supportive wife Bobbi Gerlick, Matt Gerlick, Blake Angelos, Larry Holloway, Milo Peterson, Ray Downey, Paul Sorensen, Dave Price, Talley Sherwood, Bob Ridgely, Allen Signs, Mark Kelly, Tom Sherwood, Ty Miles, Mystic (my cat), Mike Riggens, and Rajiv Misra.

Message to the world: Ask yourself, Who Am I? Continue asking this question and simply look and listen deeply.

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