Noah Preminger
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Noah Preminger “… impressive, challenging, and beautiful.” – Kevin Lowenthal The Boston Globe “...he designs a different kind of sound for each note, an individual destiny and story.” – Ben Ratliff The New York Times “...another major gift to the jazz world... with the grace and expressiveness of a jazz veteran...” – Owen McNally The Hartford Courant NOAH PREMINGER www.NoahPreminger.com NOAH PREMINGER is one of the fastest-rising tenor saxophonists and composers on the jazz scene today, and the leader of the NOAH PREMINGER QUARTET. NOAH PREMINGER’S latest CD, “Before the Rain” (Palmetto Records, 2011) has received rave reviews in the New York Times, DownBeat, Jazz Times and many other influential publications, and has been getting radio airplay all across the United States. Based in New York City, Noah is a constant presence in the city’s jazz clubs as both a leader and an in-demand sideman, and his international tours have brought his music to audiences in Europe and Australia. It’s natural for those being introduced to Noah’s music to be surprised to learn that the seasoned, virtuosic saxophone improvisations they’re hearing are being created by an artist who happens to be only 25 years old. It’s equally natural that Noah’s concept for his quartet’s innovatively swinging sound and acclaimed interpretations of jazz ballads would come to its ideal realization via a musical partnership with some of the most accomplished veterans of the New York scene: pianist Frank Kimbrough, bassist John Hébert, and drummer Matt Wilson, the musicians who join Noah on “Before the Rain.” In the space of just a few short years, Noah has already won recognition as one of the most distinctive instrumental voices in jazz. Noah’s first CD, “Dry Bridge Road” (Nowt Records, 2008), was named the year’s “Best Debut” in the 2008 Village Voice Jazz Critics’ Poll, and Noah was one of the elite nominees for the 2009 Jazz Journalists Association Award won by Esperanza Spalding that year for “Up and Coming Jazz Artist of the Year.” In addition to his work as a bandleader, Noah’s growing reputation and avid interest in the musical wisdom of elder masters has resulted in appearances and projects with such artists as Cecil McBee, Billy Hart, Dave Holland, Fred Hersch, Dave Douglas, Victor Lewis, John and Bucky Pizzarelli, John McNeil, Billy Drummond, George Cables, Roscoe Mitchell, Dr. Eddie Henderson, Kendra Shank, Ben Monder and Dave Liebman. Noah’s arrival in New York City was preceded by enthusiastic buzz emanating from Boston, where his status as a standout student at the New England Conservatory of Music and numerous public performances eventually led to concerts by the Noah Preminger Quartet at Boston’s famous Scullers Jazz Club. In an article about Noah in the Boston Phoenix, music critic Jon Garelick wrote, “His sound is informed by everybody but beholden to no one, which makes him continually unpredictable and continually satisfying.” QUOTABLES Before the Rain: “… impressive, challenging, and beautiful.” – Kevin Lowenthal, Boston Globe “…luxe melodic improvising… he designs a different kind of sound for each note, an individual destiny and story.” – Ben Ratliff, New York Times “His sound is informed by everybody but beholden to no one. Which makes him continually unpredictable, and continually satisfying.” – Jon Garelick, The Boston Phoenix “…another major gift to the jazz world…a distinguished disc sure to seize attention for his evocatively melodic style… Playing with the grace and expressiveness of a jazz veteran, the young man with a horn mixes cool restraint with emotional depth and old-fashioned poetry with contemporary bite… distinctive voice as a saxophonist and composer.” – Owen McNally, The Hartford Courant Editor’s Pick: “Before the Rain is marked by the same sense of adventure and exploration as Preminger’s 2008 debut CD Dry Bridge Road, but with more compositional depth and group interplay. The tempos never rise above medium, but the creativity and passion remain extremely high.” – Ed Enright, DownBeat “4-stars…a superbly flexible quartet…full of adventure, individuality and light and shade. Preminger is a bit special.” - Ray Comiskey, Irish Times Dry Bridge Road "More than just a promising starting point, this is a display of integrity; here’s a musician you feel you can trust... Preminger’s album “Dry Bridge Road” is unusually graceful... [he] plays with care and dry precision, dividing his time among all registers, with even tone and projection in each." - Ben Ratliff, New York Times "He plays with not just chops and composure, but already a distinct voice: His approach privileges mood and reflectiveness, favoring weaving lines that can be complex but are also concise, without a trace of over-playing or bravado.” - Siddhartha Mitter, Boston Globe "With his 2008 CD Dry Bridge Road, twenty-something tenor saxophonist Noah Preminger made one of the most celebrated entrances in recent jazz history." – Redwood Jazz Alliance "There's a buzz around the young tenor player with the arid tone, the fleet lines, and the thick ideas... it's deep stuff: harmonically daring and compositionally rich." - Jim Macnie, Village Voice "[Preminger] guides his solos with a logic that’s unrushed…introspective… balancing clean execution... His six originals (out of nine total tracks) are structurally layered, mercurial, flirting with abstraction but unabashed about melody and groove. Placed end to end, they tell a compelling story." - David Adler, Time Out New York CRITICS’ CHOICE New CDs Published: January 17, 2011 NOAH PREMINGER Before the Rain (Palmetto) The tenor saxophonist Noah Preminger already sounded self-possessed at 22, when he made “Dry Bridge Road,” his first record. It was New York-style new jazz, with much thought given to compositional development, and to how a band can cohere but not too much, and to extremes of phrasing and rhythm: Mr. Preminger either liked to be right on the beat, stamping out straight eighth-notes, or floating way behind it. And he skimmed his own froth off the top — he seemed to understand that too much expressive emotion was a trap in which one musician often ended up sounding like the next. Three years later, in a new album, “Before the Rain,” he’s moved further into the deep end. Here’s a record of emotional themes, otherwise known as ballads. They’re often slow and pretty, a little vaporous and inherently dramatic. How’s his moderation coming along? Really, really well, in fact. He’s definitely taken in a lot of John Coltrane’s “Ballads” album, a lesson in understated intensity; he’s probably spent time thinking about how Joe Lovano and Charles Lloyd and Mark Turner play slow songs, finding pathos and abstraction in them, giving the upper register as much attention as the lower, or more. Otherwise he’s representing himself, and he sounds older here — not three years, but maybe 33. He deals with a few ballads from the old school — “Until the Real Thing Comes Along” and “Where or When,” which comes out in two and a half minutes of luxe melodic improvising. He plays Ornette Coleman’s “Toy Dance,” not so much a ballad but a little solemn inside its lightheartedness; Mr. Preminger plays it as if he wrote it. (His band, including the pianist Frank Kimbrough, the bassist John Hébert, and the drummer Matt Wilson, gets way inside it too.) A lot of his notes last for a long time, and each one counts more than it used to; in the theme of his own “Abreaction,” playing slowly over Mr. Wilson’s fast and quiet free-rhythm drumming, he designs a different kind of sound for each note, an individual density and story. And his own “Jamie,” the record’s last track, succeeds like “Where or When,” a straight glacial reading of a melody that ends by melting away. - BEN RATLIFF Editors’ Picks: January 2011 BY ED ENRIGHT Noah Preminger, Before The Rain (Palmetto) For his Palmetto debut and his second CD as a leader, 24-year-old tenor saxophonist Preminger has defied expectations by releasing an album of mostly ballads - giving himself and collaborators Frank Kimbrough, John Hebert and Matt Wilson the opportunity to delve into highly nuanced solo and ensemble playing. Before The Rain is marked by the same sense of adventure and exploration as Preminger's 2008 debut CD Dry Bridge Road, but with more compositional depth and group interplay. The tempos never rise above medium, but the creativity and passion remain extremely high. Friday, January 7, 2011 Noah Preminger Before the Rain (Palmetto) **** For his second album the gifted young tenor saxophonist Noah Preminger is reunited with Frank Kimbrough (piano) and John Hébert (bass) from his debut recording. Along with Matt Wilson (drums) they make a superbly flexible quartet for a programme of ballads with a contemporary and traditional character Preminger, like Kimbrough a natural ballad player, is unmistakeable, wrapping his gorgeous tone and slow vibrato expressively round the lyric beauty of Before the Rain, Until the Real Thing Comes Along and the sombre November, on which Kimbrough also distinguishes himself. But the tenor also seizes on the linear and rhythmic angularities of Quickening and Abreaction - and his exceptional rhythm section's response to them - to construct equally assured, and different, rubato performances full of adventure, individuality and light and shade. Preminger is a bit special. - RAY COMISKEY Music PLAYLIST Surprises: Jazzy, Folky and Otherwise By BEN RATLIFF Published: August 3, 2008 Noah Preminger A young jazz tenor saxophonist, a first recording, a dispatch from the land of ingrown melodies and long, searching solos: we’ve seen this a lot in New York over the last 10 years. But Mr. Preminger’s album “Dry Bridge Road” (Nowt) is unusually graceful, and it’s made with five of the better musicians now in New York.