What's Up?
"Jonathan Finlayson, in Moment & the Message, has created a great modern jazz record that also sounds like joy and feels like a dance."
—Pop Matters
"This album resonates on an emotional and intellectual level, packed with melody, depth and ideas worth stealing"
—Lucid Culture
"The best contemporary jazz is captured in its entirety in this exceptional debut"
—All About Jazz Italy
"He breathes fire, but displays finely honed command and control techniques"
—All About Jazz
"Through the tricky patterns, sudden thematic shifts and stylistic swaps on Jonathan Finlayson’s impressive debut album, one thing remains constant: the cool sense of refinement he brings to the music."
—Jazz Times
"The “trickiness” of this music is remarkably inviting. Rather than seeming technical or egg-headed, Finlayson’s themes seems natural and flowing, as if the irregular measure counts developed from breathing or walking rather than music school fancy-pantsiness. Jonathan Finlayson, in Moment & the Message, has created a great modern jazz record that also sounds like joy and feels like a dance."
—Pop Matters
"...Trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson...straddles the mathematical and the colloquial so well on this debut that he seems bound for the stature of Coleman, Lehman and Tim Berne, and even of the great Henry Threadgill before them."
—The Guardian
"This music manages a collision of complexity and almost pop-like pleasure"
—Pop Matters
"...Moment & The Message, not only displays his insightful playing and individualism but also some imposing composing skills."
—All About Jazz
"It's tight-knit music, but seductively relaxed, too."
—The Guardian
Life & Work
Bio:
Jonathan Finlayson is a disciple of the saxophonist/composer/conceptualist Steve Coleman, having joined band Five Elements in 2000 at the age of 18.
Jonathan is widely admired for his ability to tackle cutting-edge musical concepts with aplomb. He has performed and recorded in groups led by Steve Lehman, Mary Halvorson, Craig Taborn, and Henry Threadgill, and he has played alongside Von Freeman, Jason Moran, Dafnis Prieto, Vijay Iyer...
Jonathan was recognized by the New York Times as "...an incisive and often surprising trumpeter," who is "...fascinated with composition."
Born in 1982 in Berkeley, CA, Jonathan Finlayson began playing the trumpet at the age of ten in the Oakland public school system. He came under the tutelage of Bay Area legend Robert Porter, a veteran trumpeter from the bebop era, who took Finlayson under his wing; he was often seen accompanying Porter on his gigs about town and sitting in on the popular Sunday nights jam session at the Bird Cage.
Jonathan subsequently attended the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music where he studied with Eddie Henderson, Jimmy Owens, and Cecil Bridgewater.
Steve Coleman [alto sax] - Anthony Tidd [bass] - Jonathan Finlayson [trumpet] - Kokayi [wordsmith] - Sean "The Rick" Rickman [drums] - Alina Sokulska [dance]
Matrix team-member Darius Mans, Economist (PhD, MIT), president of Africare (largest aid organization in Africa), presents Africare award to Lula (2012). From 2000 to 2004 Darius served as the World Bank’s Country Director for Mozambique and Angola, leading a team which generated $150 million in annual lending, including support for public private partnerships in infrastructure which catalyzed over $1 billion in private investment. Darius lives between Washington D.C. and Salvador, Bahia.
IV. LET THERE BE PATHWAYS!
"I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
— Susan Rogers, Personal recording engineer for Prince at Paisley Park Recording Studio; Director, Music Perception & Cognition Laboratory, Berklee College of Music
"Many thanks for this - I am touched!" — Julian Lloyd Webber
"I'm truly thankful... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)" — Nduduzo Makhathini, Blue Note Records
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!" — Alicia Svigals, Klezmer violin, Founder of The Klezmatics
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))" — Clarice Assad
"Thank you" — Banch Abegaze, manager, Kamasi Washington
The Matrix uncoils from the Recôncavo of Bahia, final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history and from where some of the most physically and spiritually uplifting music ever made evolved...
...all essentially cut off from the world at large. But after 40,000 years of artistic creation by mankind, it's finally now possible to create bridges closely interconnecting all artists everywhere (having begun with the Saturno brothers above).
By the same mathematics positioning some 8 billion human beings within some 6 or so steps of each other, people in the Matrix tend to within close, accessible steps of everybody else inside the Matrix.
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles — jungle and desert and dense urban centers — both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn.
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 — the hand drum in the opening scene above — 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.
