Point of Departure
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US New York – Jazz
Point of Departure

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Edit-artist-releases-release-placeholder Snuck Out Album 2015
Sunnyside Records
Edit-artist-releases-release-placeholder Snuck In Album 2010
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"Mr Weiss, a resourceful trumpeter and arranger, devotes his Point of Departure band to the style and repertory of 1960s postbop, with contemporary urgency.

The band functions at the higher levels of postbop slipperiness, staying away from too-obvious material and addresses this music with an air of feverish discovery, and only the most permissive sort of reverence. Mr. Felder leads the best of these digressions, and like his teammates he sounds thrillingly unrestricted. Whatever Mr. Weiss meant with the name of this band, he named it well.”
-Nate Chinen, NY Times

“A red-hot live recording. This is a ferociously energetic album that will make you jump up and down as you listen to it.”
-Phil Freeman, Burning Ambulance

"The music is abstract, mysterious and aggressive. Pulsating swing jockeys with a multiplicity of broken rhythms. Dark, modal harmony, a hide-and-go-seek beat and overlapping meters blur the border between freedom and form."
-Mark Stryker Detroit Free Press

“This is spirited music, emotionally engaged on a deep level. Glorious.”
- Marcus O’Dair The Arts Desk

“Pulse-quickening live set. They feel as sharp and potent as the quickening breeze from an approaching storm.”
-Forrest Dylan Bryant, Jazz Times

The late 1960’s were a turbulent but exciting time for jazz. The music seemed to simultaneously get more complex and simpler at the same time as a variety of influences infused the music. Some were experimenting with soul, rock and exotic rhythms from the India and the Far East. Others were carrying on the innovations of the second great Miles Davis quintet, using the groups ever shifting rhythms and harmonic complexities as a springboard to new compositional ideas. Some somehow combined both to create some new, exciting music.

Point of Departure are re-examining some of the most innovative music of the period, some of it neglected, some, perhaps, never quite as developed as it could have been as things seemed to move at a pace during that period that left some music from being fully realized as they quickly moved on to the next new thing. Among the composers being re-examined and re-imagined are Andrew Hill, Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson and music from the unsung Kenny Cox and the Contemporary Jazz Quintet (who recorded two seminal but under-appreciated records for Blue Note in the late 1960’s).

In 2010, the New York-born Weiss, and his formidable ensemble – released Snuck In, the group’s critically acclaimed Sunnyside debut, recorded at the Jazz Standard. The follow-up CD, Snuck Out, consists of selections from the group’s second set from the same night, featuring the music of Charles Tolliver, Charles Moore, Wayne Shorter, and one selection composed by the leader.

“Point of Departure for the most part, performs continuous sets with each tune morphing into the next so each set is more of a complete statement than a collection of individual tunes,” Weiss says. “This is how we wanted to present this music on these two CDs, live, just as it naturally unfolded in the club that night.”

Weiss, a fearless improviser who is well-versed in the modern trumpet tradition – from Freddie Hubbard and Booker Little to Don Cherry and Woody Shaw - and co-founder of The New Composers Octet, aurally illustrates his approach to jazz ensemble improvisation by breathing new life into these sixties-era selections.

The opening number, “Revillot,” is one of Charles Tolliver’s oldest pieces, and was released on Jackie McLean’s album, It’s Time (dig Allen’s sly quote of Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman.”). “Charles is one of the people who showed me the light and got me in the mind set that made this band possible, Weiss says. “Strive to be the best musician possible, always move forward and do it with passion and conviction. Go for the jugular and mean it.”

Snuck Out is a daring and dynamic recording that captures an exciting jazz ensemble at the height of their improvisational powers. “We are trying to blur the lines between the composition and the improvising,” Weiss says. “The improvising is more based on the tune, more of a theme and variation thing than a head, solo, head thing so one can continue on after the melody has been stated and people can think it is still part of the melody or vice versa.”