(Photo of David Ambrosio ©Clara Pereira)
Veteran New York City bassist David Ambrosio’s most recent project, “Civil Disobedience: Blue Note in the Progressive ‘60s,” was not only one of the peaks of our 2023-24 season, it caused all kinds of good trouble around the country and around the world. (The group’s fiery album of the same name finally came out earlier this year.) But Ambrosio’s bass—and his vision--drive several equally worthy bands, including a longstanding sextet co-led by drummer Russ Meissner, with whom Ambrosio has constituted an in-demand rhythm section since the mid-1990s. In fact, multiple members of this group have joined in various configurations and permutations on more than half a dozen albums. But it’s been almost a decade since all six reassembled to revisit the magic of their 2016 album Moments in Time. So we’re happy to have persuaded them to mount a reunion tour marking the tenth anniversary of that powerful record—a collection of “gorgeous” tunes, as longtime New York Times jazz writer Peter Watrous described it, that stands as “the reward for a long chase, the endless chase for beauty…producing a perfection that so rarely happens, and can only be a product of so much shared knowledge.”
In addition to leading his own ensembles (and playing a supporting role in those of his bandmates), Ambrosio has a long list of sideman credits that include the BMI New York Jazz Orchestra and smaller groups helmed by the likes of Kenny Werner, Joe Lovano, Ralph Alessi, and Buddy DeFranco. With degrees in classical composition and jazz performance, Ambrosio draws on a broad musical palette stretched further by extensive travel, study, performance, and teaching in Cuba and Central and Southeast Asia. He’s currently on the faculties of Hunter College and the New York Jazz Workshop.
Toronto native Russ Meissner attended William Paterson University in New Jersey, where he studied with drummer John Riley and bassist Rufus Reid. A key figure on the NYC music scene for three decades, Meissner is a regular in bands led by guitarist Jim Campilongo and trumpeter Dave Scott, and he has played with artists as stylistically diverse as John Abercrombie, Bill Charlap, Norah Jones, and Lucy Wainwright Roche. His discography stretches to more than thirty albums and he’s toured throughout North America, Europe, Israel, and Japan.
The collective CV of the co-leaders’ musical compatriots (alto saxophonist Loren Stillman, multi-instrumentalist Matt Renzi, guitarist Nate Radley, and pianist Leonard Thompson)—the illustrious teachers and mentors, the Who’s Who of employers and co-conspirators, the acclaimed albums and compositions, the myriad awards and credentials—would stretch to dozens of pages. Suffice it to say, without flattening their considerable individual talents, that they’re all seasoned pros with simpatico sensibilities. And together they represent multiple Moments in Time: the wide-open excitement of the ‘90s New York scene, the prelapsarian tension of 2016, and the uncertain cusp of the present day. At the same time, their music exceeds any one moment. You can hear that transcendence first of all, says Peter Watrous, “in all the interplay between bass and drums, the constant shading of time, the collective sense of swing, and sometimes the contradictory impulses that two [or more] individuals playing together deal with, and at their best, turn into art. This is changeable music, with musicians working at the highest level of improvisation; nothing stays the same for too long.”
We hope you’ll come catch some of those sublime fleeting moments at the Playhouse.
david ambrosio | russ meissner | moments in time @ youtube music
(at Chez Hanny, San Francisco, 2017)
Thanks to Our Allies
We couldn’t present such world-class artists at such affordable prices without the steadfast support of dozens of RJA members & sponsors, not to mention the community spirit of Arcata’s dynamic arts agency, Playhouse Arts. Special thanks to Bug Press, the most steadfast of jazz allies, for its abiding generosity.
Additional support for this show comes from Cafe Brio, Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate, Bob and Amy Doran, and North Coast Co-Op.