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Audible Spirits: Audible Spirits

Audible Spirits is not your father's or for that matter your grandmother's book of standards. Vibraphonist Matt Moran, trombonist Curtis Hasselbring, and vocalist Sarah Elizabeth Charles reinvent, reinterpret, and definitely reimagine eight classic jazz compositions. For a living jazz musician of any age, there is a book of songs that is de rigueur in jazz education. This is also required if one is to sit in on jam sessions or have at the ready to quote in an improvisation. Most are incorporated in Jamey Aebersold's Play-A-Long series, where a professional rhythm section lays down an accompanying track for a student to play along and improvise over the chord changes.

Our trio of Moran, Hasselbring, and Charles sample and manipulate those Play-A-Long tracks to serve, not tradition, but a new purpose. Duke Ellington's "Satin Doll" with lyrics by Johnny Mercer opens with a sample of Aebersold counting the time signature. Hasselbring's trombone and Moran's vibraphone follow in step before Charles' vocals are heard over the prerecorded piano/bass/drum backing. The 'live' trio finishes the track with solos and Charles' gorgeous vocals. From this simplicity, the trio layers multiple versions of Jerome Kern's "All The Things You Are" on top of each other, almost as if two radios are playing the same version slightly out of sync. Oliver Nelson debuted "Stolen Moments" on The Blues And The Abstract Truth (Impulse!, 1961) with vocalist Mark Murphy adding lyrics in 1978. Our trio samples the dominant Aebersold bass line plus brushes and cymbal work as the foundation for echoey trombone, vibraphone, and vocals to flesh out the melody before applying glitchy effects to end the track. John Coltrane's "Moment Notice" is returned to us as if in a dream. Opening with ghostly vocals, Moran's vibraphone pushes the repeating sampled piano towards the melody with spectral help from Hasselbring and Charles.

With Audible Spirits, Moran, Hasselbring, and Charles make the conventional unorthodox and the traditional novel.