CD, FLAC, MP3, and Sheet Music available at my Store. Autographed copies by request. Also available at Bandcamp and on Apple Music.
“a low-key marvel” - JazzTimes
The second Rosetta Trio album.
rec·la·ma·tion (n)
1. the conversion of unusable land, for example, desert or marsh, into land suitable for farming or other uses
2. the extraction of useful substances from waste or refuse the claiming back of something taken or given away
Reclamation is Stephan Crump’s debut on Sunnyside Records. Featuring nine intensely personal compositions, including the polyglot “Pernambuco,” an extended work commissioned by 92nd St Y and New York Guitar Festival, Reclamation is a declaration of a unique new compositional voice and a fresh statement from a formidable chamber ensemble.
The album’s opening track, “Memphis,” delves into the theme with a loping wistfulness, as Crump honors that which his hometown has given him while also conjuring a fitful goodbye. The intensity of “Overreach” speaks to the self-destructive tendencies of his own country while the epic “Pernambuco” looks outward from the Brazilian wood from which his bass bow was carved, to the whole of history and the ravaging of a rich land’s resources. The introspective “Escalateur” is a song of striving, ascending, while the center track warns of the ways technology can render us “Here Not Here.”
Crump brought together Rosetta Trio for the first time in 2005 to record an album of pieces written in the aftermath of 9/11. That “engaging and sublime meeting” of Crump on acoustic bass with guitarists Liberty Ellman and Jamie Fox, produced the album Rosetta which was released in 2006 and greeted enthusiastically by fans, radio and the press. “Here is a string ensemble for the new century!” raved Donald Elfman in All About Jazz NY. Reclamation is much more than a follow-up effort to its ecstatically-received predecessor, though it was the earlier album that gave the trio its name and its mission: to inhabit the dynamic and rhythmic flexibility of a drumless ensemble and embrace its challenges and expanded responsibilities; to reject restrictions of genre; to explore different territories of feel, texture, color; to groove. Here the trio further develops its intimate synergy and reveals its maturity after having toured and recorded in numerous contexts since those first sessions. This is a band.
Rosetta Trio
LIBERTY ELLMAN · acoustic guitar
JAMIE FOX · electric guitar
STEPHAN CRUMP · acoustic bass