ERIMAJ @ Jazz Standard 5/10/11

I thought it was fun to have John Ellis be the first live music I hear in NYC after jazzfest, since he was also the last I heard before I went.  All I saw was John Ellis, Jason Moran, and it had a bunch of people.  I didn't notice the vocalist, and that he had a big roll.

It started out with just the quartet, which was always on stage.  Drums, bass, piano, guitar.  It was fabulous.  Then we got some horn action.  It was nice to have sax and trombone.  John played the bass clarinet on a couple of pieces, which I always love.

I wasn't thrilled with so many vocals because they dominate.  Jamire sure liked them.  Still, the magnificence of the instruments came through and it was a good show.

Dr. Lonnie Smith was in the audience.  It turns out Jamire is his grandson.

I didn't think about it until I was almost home that I'd wanted to see Ben Perowsky, Sasha Dobson and Trevor Dunn at Doma.  Oh well, you can't go if you don't remember.

John Ellis – tenor saxophone
Corey King – trombone
Matt Stevens – guitar
Jason Moran – piano
Vicente Archer – bass
Jamire Williams – drums
Chris Turner – voice

ERIMAJ is largely comprised of musicians hailing from the American South including former New Orleans resident John Ellis and Houston natives Jason Moran and Jamire Williams (ERIMAJ is his first name backwards). Given these roots, it’s no wonder that ERIMAJ expertly delivers what New York Times critic Ben Ratliff described as “jazz that was intuitive about funk, a subtle music instigated by smart young Southerners in the North that didn’t undersell itself by going obviously abstract or retro.” This is a special “sneak peak” of the forthcoming release “Conflict of a Man.”