Matt Bauder - Nightshades (2014)

Tenor saxophonist and clarinetist Matt Bauder is one of those young musicains who has an equal capacity to play in and out of the formal idiomatic conventions. When with Memorize the Sky he goes out, profiting from his studies with the innovative composers Anthony Braxton, Alvin Lucier and Ron Kuivila. Conversely, his band Day in Pictures (now reformed by replacing Angelica Sanchez for Kris Davis) operates completely in jazz domains, and does it very much according to the tradition. The truth is that the jazz tradition has defined a space for freedom right from the start, and Bauder is a master of combining that freedom with form.