Touch My Beloved's Thought

by Greg Ward

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Tom Colquhoun Ward's swirling, breezy sax feels very close and intimate - listening to it I pictured myself in a small basement room as the band played - but the 10 tongues paint a joyful and sophisticated urban fairytale that changes scene cinematically and builds to a satisfying finale. Favorite track: Gather Round, The Revolution Is At Hand.

John Cratchley Released on Dave Douglas' influential Greenleaf Music...DD has exemplary antenna! Ascendent ensemble playing. This is a great listen...intrinsically linked to Mingus' 'The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady', listen separately or in conjunction but embrace both. Think of them as call and response, perhaps.

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	1.	Daybreak 06:48
	2.	Singular Serande 04:02
	3.	The Menacing Lean 06:32
	4.	Smash, Push, Pull, Crash 00:45
	5.	With All Your Sorrow, Sing a Song of Jubilance 05:47
	6.	Grit 03:26
	7.	Round 3 06:20
	8.	Dialogue of the Black Saint 04:41
	9.	Gather Round, The Revolution Is At Hand 12:34

about

This album is a creation story. Of standing on the shoulders of ancestors. Of legacy and lineage. Of desegregating dance and music. Of giving complete freedom to artists. Of masterpieces begot from pain.

From Bird and Diz (Mercury Records, 1952). To The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (Impulse! Records, 1963). To Touch My Beloved’s Thought (Greenleaf, 2016). A line of musical inspiration that moves in anything but a straight line. It swirls, breaks, splits, leaps, jumps off and on, stops, turns, floods, flocks, tenses, stomps, rests, circles, yearns, holds and blares. This music dances. This dance musics. This is ngoma – the Kiswahili word that is dance and music and drum, that in East Africa is a night of all three together.

When composer Greg Ward and choreographer Onye Ozuzu were
commissioned to create a night of all three together inspired by The
Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, they chose to reference Mingus’ time
and rhythms, runs and melodies, structures and signatures – to realize
Mingus’ impulse to create ethnic-folk-dance music – and to make
something that held Greg and Onye’s own meanings.

In making Touch My Beloved’s Thought, Greg and Onye talked about
Mingus and the music and all that pain that drove him to create. “I had
the image of thunder cracking sparks through a grey sky,” Onye said,
“Like the sound breaking the tension and letting it rain…finding a way to release the storm pent up in the clouds, letting the pain drain.”

They did. So, listen how. Play this record. And dance.

-Roell Smidt

credits

released July 8, 2016

Personnel:
Greg Ward: alto saxophone, compositions
Tim Haldeman: tenor saxophone
Keefe Jackson: tenor & baritone saxophone
Ben LaMar Gay: cornet
Russ Johnson: trumpet
Norman Palm: trombone
Christopher Davis: bass trombone
Dennis Luxion: piano
Jason Roebke: bass
Marcus Evans: drums

Production Credits:
Produced by Greg Ward, Mike Reed, and Roell Smidt
Executive Producer Dave Douglas
Recorded Live at Constellation in Chicago, IL
Mixed and Mastered by Griffin Alan Rodriguez
Artwork and Design by Jonathan Crawford

All Compositions by Greg Ward/Greg Ward 2 Music/ASCAP

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about

Greg Ward Chicago, Illinois

Considered one of the most versatile saxophonists of his generation, Greg Ward launches his new group Rogue Parade with the release of his latest album, 'Stomping Off From Greenwood,' featuring a quintet of Chicago's finest creative musicians.

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