Bright Red Dog
This Brazilian cultural matrix positions Bright Red Dog globally...
Curation
CURATION
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from this page:
by Title Holder
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
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Name:
Bright Red Dog
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City/Place:
Albany, New York
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Country:
United States
Life & Work
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Bio:
Bright Dog Red (BDR), an improvising collective from Albany, New York, released Under the Porch on May 20, 2022. Under the Porch, marks the ensemble’s fifth album since signing with Ropeadope in 2018.
Under the Porch features twelve tracks, recorded part by part, layer by layer, edit after edit, over a period spanning late 2020 to late 2021. The album, arguably BDR’s most accessible to date, features a new take on the ensemble’s “signature sound” a mix of “free-form jazz, funk, rock, and hip-hop” (Glide Magazine).
Bright Dog Red, celebrated for “sublimely marrying jazz with hip-hop, funk, and electronic music" (JazzTimes), has long been “a fixture on the NYC jazz and improvisation scene” (Jazz Journal). The group’s "proudly unanchored improvisation" (Downbeat) has been described as “part Ornette Coleman and Prime Time, part Lounge Lizards, part A Tribe Called Quest” (JazzTimes). Others have compared the group to “Mahavishnu Orchestra meets Digable Planets” (Paul Schulman), “Romantic Warrior era Return to Forever” (Rimas e Batidas), and “electronic Ahmad Jamal" (Don Lucoff).
Founded by Joe Pignato, BDR is comprised of a rotating cast of players. In addition to Pignato (drums, percussion, concepts), Under the Porch features Eric Person(soprano and alto saxophones, flute, effects), Tim Lefebvre (electric bass), Tyreek Jackson (electric bass and guitar), Cody Davies (sounds), Mike LaBombard (tenor saxophone, effects), Anthony Berman (acoustic bass), and Matt Coonan (poetry, freestyling, voice).
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
ON UNDER THE PORCH
Glide Magazine:
"Genre-agnostic, uncategorizable, and intensely thrilling.
Blue in Greek Podcast, UK:
Renowned as an improvising collective from New York, Bright Dog Red's new album, 'Under the Porch', continues to present the band's unique vision for an all-encompassing approach to modern-day jazz celebrating inspirations from hip-hop, electronica and spiritual jazz. Thanks to their long-running association with one of the leading labels for contemporary and forward-thinking jazz music, Ropeadope Records, Bright Dog Red continue to deliver music that both challenges and inspires and 'Under the Porch' marks an exciting inclusion within the band's ever-expanding catalogue.
ON IN VIVO
JazzTimes:
“Best kept secret in the avant-jazz underground…BDR has turned up nothing but aces over a rollicking three-album stretch on the Ropeadope label, sublimely marrying jazz with hip-hop, funk, and electronic music…part 1980s-era Ornette Coleman and Prime Time, part Lounge Lizards, part A Tribe Called Quest….The consummate genre-juggling party band.”
Downbeat: "★★★ ½. Proudly unanchored improvisation....an unedited stream of musical consciousness...burns with bop swing. The melodic cogency, rhythmic clarity and sonic ingenuity in these ad hoc live improvisations astounds.”
Glide Magazine: “BDR melds the influences of free-form jazz, funk, rock, and hip-hop into their signature sound. Much is made about improvisation or playing in the moment. While some bands pay casual reference to those phrases, as if to think it will improve their credibility, Bright Dog Red (BDR) makes it their mantra. They are the epitome of in-the-moment playing."
Nu Jazz Sounds, UK: "Amongst the most exciting and creative jazz musicians out there today.”
Blue in Green Podcast, UK: "A fantastic live set...genuinely thrilling."
Best of Jazz: "Improvised music captured live...experimental jazz mixed with hip-hop, electronica, and a touch of krautrock: a refreshing discovery."
ON SOMETHIN' COMES ALONG
Nippertown:
"Best of 2020. How can you NOT love a group that can pair sharp, funny, intelligent lyrics with a borderline-chaotic mix of jazz, rock and hip-hop unmatched by anyone in the game? Bright Dog Red is not a gimmick; it is a force to be reckoned with, and may the reckoning come soon for all of us!"
Albany Times Union:
"Jazz outfit riding creativity high."
SF Gate:
"The most dynamic incarnation of Bright Dog Red yet." -SF Gate, US
Glide Magazine:
"Exciting, mesmerizing...hard-edged free jazz stylings."
Dan Ouellette, Jazz and Beyond Intel, US:
“Ups the ante of free music…bursting with improvisation that defies categorization.”
One Man's Jazz Canada:
"Successfully combines freer improvisation with contemporary street culture."
Constellations Radio, UK:
"Could be album of the year."
Nu Jazz Sounds, UK:
"They are the best at what they do."
Marlbank, UK:
"Spirited, a full throttle go-for-it charge for the line affair."
UK Vibe:
"★★★★★. The music runs a joyous gamut now synonymous with the BDR brand."
The Daily Gazette:
"Packed with improvised and innovative jazz elements, and funk."
Radio Ros Brera, Italia:
“Poetry and jazz play together like neighborhood children.”
Jazz in Family, Italia:
"Could find an important position among the most famous bands playing innovative jazz ."
A Closer Listen, UK:
"Folds in a generous amount of hip-hop, funk, poetry and freestyling. The fact that the band has opened for Parliament Funkadelic says all we need to know."
Bill Barnett, WVUD Radio:
“With two hours of music, this is the most generous helping of skronk-hop you’ll see this year, dig in.”
Joy Sounds Pod Cast:
“Bright Dog Red is making it up as they go along, literally. All of their music is created in the moment, through free improvisation...brings together hip hop, electronica, psychedelia and noise into a spontaneous soundscape taking the listener on a journey through their spur of the moment process.”
Notas Azuis, Portugal:
“It is invention that drives Bright Dog Red, spontaneous and unrepeatable invention, the meeting of brains and lungs, of muscles and hands and throats, of ideas and dreams, of different experiences. Because there is always something that appears, that takes us to some other place. Life, like this music, is made up of a constant flow, with an unstoppable force, like that of the locomotive that adorns the cover of this album.”
ON HOW'S BY YOU?
Modern Drummer:
“A seamless blend of seemingly disparate influences, creating a post-modern mélange that ranges from the familiar to the surprising…thought-provoking, toe-tapping, boundary-defying...inspired music.”
Blue in Green Radio, UK:
“Best of 2019. Experimental and diverse…you ultimately stop trying to comprehend this unravelling psychedelic experience and just learn to accept its mesmerizing nature.”
DJ Nick, UK:
“Best of 2019. Absolutely brilliant!”
Nippertown:
“Best of 2019. Boundary-breaking alt-jazz improv.”
Glide Magazine:
“Fiery…free-flowing and immersive. Rhyming, noise and electronics weave in and out.”
Radio Le Grigri, France:
“Un chien nourri au hip-hop, à l’electro, au jazz et qui rappe ; assurément un chien d’avant-garde A dope album!” [“A dog fed hip-hop, electro, jazz and rapping; certainly an avant-garde dog. A dope album!”]
The Bolg:
“A stellar beatnik odyssey, filled with risks, that grows and unfurls more and more after each spin…a big musical Ouija board.”
Start-FM 94.2, Vilnius, Lithuania:
“What happens when you mix spontaneous jazz, hip-hop, poetry, psychedelics and noise? Bright Dog Red. Never stops evolving – just like we all should.”
Nu Jazz Sounds, UK:
“Spirited and free forming jazz with a bit of electronica and hip hop thrown in for good measure!”
ON MEANS TO THE ENDS
Nippertown:
“Divine madness…a brilliant package of vibrant, intricate, surprising pieces.”
Jazz Journal, UK:
“An enjoyable jazz and ‘hip-pop’ hybrid…a seamless and well-crafted product.”
Blue in Green Radio, UK:
“Spirited and inspired jazz that skillfully weaves in additional elements of electronica and hip-hop.”
DJ Nick, UK:
“Wild, refreshing, creative music. A sense of mystery because you don’t know where it’s going, where it’s going to end up, but it takes you on a journey. Cracking good music.”
Green Arrow Radio:
“Doesn’t fit into anything, and that’s just fine! So much going on…takes many, many listens before you feel like you’re not getting that one off, ‘this is mine,’ experience… an incredible capture.”
ON BRIGHT DOG RED
Blue in Green Radio, UK:
"Theirs is an unrivalled approach to contemporary jazz.”
Modern Drummer:
"Jazz that draws on psychedelic, electronic soundscapes, improvised hip-hop, funk, and more."
Jazzwise, UK:
"Mash-up of Maceo-style funk, old-school rap and jazz-rock riffage."
Jazz Journal, UK:
“Starting as a jazz-meets-hip-hop jam band with a loosely-defined membership, Bright Dog Red has become a fixture on the NYC jazz and improvisation scene.”
UK Vibe:
“Inventive and Bold.”
The Alt Weekly:
“An innovative and psychedelic mesh of jazz, hip-hop and electronica.”
The Bolg:
“Put Albany’s Bright Dog Red on your radar as this jazzy psychedelic hip hop posse has potential for some progressive golden era goodness.”
Louis Marks, CEO Ropeadope Records:
“Bright Dog Red is perhaps the most unique band to grace the halls of Ropeadope, and that’s quite an accomplishment. Bright Dog Red hits the stage without charts or set list – they simply start playing and improvise, taking cues from each other and from the audience and room. It’s adventurous, and due to the skill and rapport of the players, surprisingly cohesive.”
Clips (more may be added)
The Integrated Global Creative Economy (we invented the concept) uncoils from Brazil's sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix... concatenating branches of a virtual rainforest tree rooted in Bahia, canopy spreading to embrace the entire planet...
Ex Terra Brasilis
A starting point for this project was the culture born in Brazil's quilombos (in Angola a "quilombo" is a village; in Brazil it is a village either founded by Africans or Afro-Brazilians who had escaped slavery, or — as in the case of São Francisco do Paraguaçu above — occupied by such after abandonment by the ruling class)...
...theme music for this Brazilian Matrix, from an Afro-Brazilian Mass by
From inside this Matrix, all creators-creative entities everywhere — empowered by the mathematics of network theory — become potentially discoverable by all people worldwide. Go straight to one of the (randomly selected) creators-creative entities below to see how their Matrix Page — information and media, outgoing and incoming curation — works (reload to feature other artists/creators), or find out below the black line below what unsung (metaphorically only) brilliance this is all about:
More on these profound incubators of Afro-Brazilian culture at:
Os Quilombos da Bahia
The Quilombos of Bahia
There are certain countries, the names of which fire the popular imagination. Brazil is one of them; an amalgam of primitive and sophisticated, jungle and elegance, luscious jazz harmonics — there’s no other place like it in the world. And while Rio de Janeiro, or its fame anyway, tends toward the sophisticated end of the spectrum, Bahia bends toward the atavistic…
It’s like a trick of the mind’s light (I suppose), but standing on beach or escarpment in Salvador and looking out across the Baía de Todos os Santos to the great Recôncavo, and mindful of what happened there (and here; the Bahian Recôncavo was final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place throughout the entirety of mankind’s existence on this planet ... in the past it extended into what is now urban Salvador), one must be led to the inevitable conclusion that one is in a place unique to history, and to the present:
Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities (and their music) now largely forgotten in their lands of origin.
Brazil was a refuge (of sorts) for Sephardim fleeing an Inquisition which followed them across the Atlantic (that unofficial symbol of Brazil’s national music — the pandeiro — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people).
Across the parched savannas of the interior of Brazil’s culturally fecund nordeste/northeast (where wizard Hermeto Pascoal was born in Lagoa da Canoa — Lagoon of the Canoe — and raised in Olho d’Águia — Eye of the Eagle), much of Brazil’s aboriginal population was absorbed into a caboclo/quilombola culture punctuated by the Star of David.
Three cultures — from three continents — running for their lives, their confluence forming an unprecedented fourth. Pandeirista on the roof.
That's where this Matrix begins:
Wolfram MathWorld
The idea is simple, powerful, and egalitarian: To propagate for them, the Matrix must propagate for all. Most in the world are within six degrees of us. The concept of a "small world" network (see Wolfram above) applies here, placing artists from the Recôncavo and the sertão, from Salvador... from Brooklyn, Berlin and Mombassa... musicians, writers, filmmakers... clicks (recommendations) away from their peers worldwide.
Recent Visitors Map
Great culture is great power.
And in a small world great things are possible.
Alicia Svigals
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
I opened the shop in Salvador, Bahia in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for magnificent Brazilian musicians.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix, then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC (I've lived here in Brazil for 32 years now) I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Across the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
For a complete list of everybody inside, tap TOTAL below:
TOTAL
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Matt Garrison
RÁDIO MATRIX