Stand Up! Jerome Sabbagh

• 1 Lone Jack 06:01
• 2 Michelle's Song 04:19
• 3 Lunar Cycle 04:17
• 4 The Break Song 05:05
• 5 High Falls 05:57
• 6 Mosh Pit 03:21
• 7 Vanguard 05:16
• 8 Unbowed 05:23
• Total Runtime 39:39

Info for Stand Up!

Acclaimed saxophonist/composer Jerome Sabbagh reconvenes his longstanding quartet for the first time in more than a decade for the timely "Stand Up!".

Due out October 17, 2025 via Analog Tone Factory, the album features guitarist Ben Monder, bassist Joe Martin, and new addition, drummer Nasheet Waits.

Saxophonist and composer Jerome Sabbagh has always prided himself on being an artist who stands up strongly for the qualities and principles that he believes in – artistic integrity, bold individuality, social consciousness, and a distinctive personal vision. His vibrant new album, "Stand Up!", asserts those values in a number of ways, wedding memorable compositions to fervent playing by Sabbagh’s longtime quartet. "Stand Up!" was recorded live to analog tape and released on the saxophonist’s own newly-founded label, Analog Tone Factory.

With "Stand Up!", Sabbagh celebrates more than 20 years with his outstanding quartet – guitarist Ben Monder, bassist Joe Martin, and, making his recorded debut with the band, drummer Nasheet Waits. The album marks the group’s first release in over a decade, a period in which Sabbagh has focused on fruitful collaborations with jazz elders including pianist Kenny Barron ("Vintage") and the late drummer Al Foster ("Heart").

Throughout that time, the quartet has never lost its prominent place among Sabbagh’s priorities. “A lot of my favorite music in jazz has been created by working bands,” the saxophonist states. “Miles Davis’ first and second quintets, the John Coltrane quartet, the Bill Evans Trio, Lovano / Frisell / Motian – those are real bands. Part of what made them so great is the fact that they played together with a certain frequency, even if they didn’t stay together for so many years.”

The centrality of the core idea behind "Stand Up!" to Sabbagh’s artistic thinking is reflected by the fact that the album shares its title with a composition that the quartet recorded on its second album, 2007’s "Pogo". It felt all the more relevant as a cri de cœur today, both as the band’s debut on Sabbagh’s new independent imprint and in regards to the larger backdrop of political turmoil against which it was created.

“I believe that the title captures the feel of the moment,” Sabbagh explains. “I feel both a desire and a sense of urgency to be myself artistically, to try to write music I believe in and play it with the people that I have a strong connection with. It's also time to stand up for what you believe in, whether that means making an artistic statement or finding a way to affect our political reality in a positive way.”

As far-reaching as that concept may be, the pieces that Sabbagh wrote for "Stand Up!" are also intimate and deeply personal, each one dedicated to a person (or people) who has impacted the path of his music – some of them friends and colleagues, most of them influences and inspirations.

The rollicking country blues feel of opener “Lone Jack,” for instance, is a tribute to R&B icon Ray Charles, in particular his country-influenced classics like "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music". The title is the name of the Missouri hometown of pianist and producer Pete Rende, also Sabbagh’s partner in Analog Tone Factory and the song’s co-dedicatee. Both “Michelle’s Song” and “High Falls” were written for personal acquaintances of Sabbagh’s, the former a tender ballad buoyed by Martin’s elegant bass, the latter a Brazilian-flavored tune evoking memories of a scenic waterfall in Upstate New York and of seeing João Gilberto perform at Carnegie Hall.

“Lunar Cycle” is a play on Sam Rivers’ “Cyclic Episode,” from the saxophonist’s 1965 debut "Fuchsia Swing Song". The piece also shares genetic material with Rivers’ work in its ability to straddle the line between edge-walking audacity and indelible melody. This stems in large part from the heavy influence that Sabbagh draws from singers, which emerges through the warm vocal quality in his own playing. That aspect is also showcased on “The Break Song,” dedicated to Stevie Wonder, a soulful tune that serves as an ideal set-closer for the quartet.

Waits’ gift for explosivity and Monder’s mastery of noise-metal extremes come to fore on the blistering “Mosh Pit,” dedicated to Trent Reznor of the pioneering industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails (and now an acclaimed, Oscar-winning soundtrack composer). “[Nine Inch Nails’] "Downward Spiral" and "The Fragile" were both important records for me,” Sabbagh says. “I listened to them a lot, and I found their energy, their creativity, and their unique mix of rawness and sophistication really appealing.”

Another formative experience for Sabbagh was seeing the great drummer Paul Motian play at the Village Vanguard. Even more crucially, Sabbagh and Monder were called to form a new trio with Motian that played a week on that venerated stage shortly before the drummer passed away in 2011. Those experiences, and the singular floating yet grounded sensation generated by Motian’s airy-sculptural approach to the drums, are captured on “Vanguard.” The album closes with “Unbowed,” an homage to the indefatigable Kenny Barron.

As always, Sabbagh has a strong sense of matching artwork with content on his releases, choosing impactful imagery that echoes the album’s themes in oblique yet poetic fashion. The pictures that grace the front and back covers of "Stand Up!" are both the work of Italian photographer Michele Palazzo, who also provided the cover shot for "Heart". The front cover’s play of light, reflection and distortion suggest a Blade Runner sci-fi dystopia; the reverse is a stark black and white image of a lone human figure dwarfed by a looming, oppressive concrete wall. Both conjure the threat of cold, anti-human forces and the desire for escape.

A return to a more human-centered approach is key to Sabbagh’s efforts with Analog Tone Factory, which aims to capture the live sound of bands as effectively and as beautifully as possible, and eschews digital manipulation to do so. On each of the label’s releases, the band records together in one room to analog tape. For ultimate fidelity, "Stand Up!", the third release on Analog Tone Factory following "Heart" and Chris Cheek’s album featuring Bill Frisell, "Keepers of the Eastern Door", was recorded live to two track on 1/2 inch tape at 30 ips on a custom tube Ampex 351 tape recorder by famed engineer James Farber. It was mastered in the analog domain by the legendary Bernie Grundman.

Humanity converging to create something of beauty – that is the spirit summoned by "Stand Up!". “It’s so important to me that this band is still together after all these years,” Sabbagh says. “If you're going to go out on a limb and take chances to try to come up with something you’ve never played before, you need trust, and we have that in this band. Jazz is social music. We come up with ideas when playing with other people that we wouldn't necessarily discover by ourselves. That's one of the great beauties of this music, and a big part of what attracts me to it.”

Jerome Sabbagh, tenor saxophone
Ben Monder, guitar
Joe Martin, bass
Nasheet Waits, drums

Recorded by James Farber at Power Station, New York, live to 1/2 inch two track analog tape on a custom tube Ampex 351 at 30 ips, November 7, 2024
Assistant Engineers: Pete Rende, Matthew Soares, Omisha Chaitanya
Mastered by Bernie Grundman at Bernie Grundman Mastering, Hollywood
Produced by Jerome Sabbagh & Pete Rende
Executive Producer: Ana Mighty Sound

Jerome Sabbagh
was born in Paris in 1973 and has been living in Brooklyn since 1995. A prolific forward-thinking composer, as well as a musician with a deep connection to the well of the jazz tradition, he has recorded nine albums as a leader.

Jerome Sabbagh’s latest recordings are Heart (Analog Tone Factory, 2024), a trio record with Joe Martin and master drummer Al Foster, and Vintage (Sunnyside, 2023), an album of original compositions and standards which features legendary pianist and NEA jazz master Kenny Barron in intimate duets, as well as in a quartet setting with Joe Martin and Johnathan Blake.

Jerome Sabbagh’s longstanding group with Ben Monder, Joe Martin and Ted Poor, a band which has been together since 2004, has released three albums, the critically acclaimed North, Pogo and The Turn, which was listed as one of the best albums of 2014 by the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, DownBeat, Ottawa Citizen and France Musique. Jerome has also recorded an album exclusively devoted to standards, One Two Three, in a saxophone trio setting with Ben Street and Rodney Green. I Will Follow You is a freer project featuring European drum legend Daniel Humair and Ben Monder. Plugged In, sparked by a CMA/FACE grant, is an electric project co-led with Jozef Dumoulin, with Patrice Blanchard and Rudy Royston.

Jerome Sabbagh also co-leads the Jerome Sabbagh/Greg Tuohey Group, which recorded No Filter with Joe Martin on bass and Kush Abadey on drums, and performs as part of the collective trio Lean with Simon Jermyn and Allison Miller.

As a sideman, Jerome Sabbagh was one of Paul Motian's last saxophone players. After one gig together, the legendary drummer asked him to play for a week at the Village Vanguard, in his "New Trio" with guitarist Ben Monder, in September 2011. He also has been involved with pianist Laurent Coq's quartet, Guillermo Klein's Los Guachos and the Marta Sanchez Quintet.

Jerome Sabbagh has shared the stage with Al Foster, Victor Lewis, Bill Stewart, Jeff Ballard, Greg Hutchinson, Billy Drummond, Nasheet Waits, Eric McPherson, Justin Brown, Eliot Zigmund, Andrew Cyrille, Damion Reid, Mark Turner, Melissa Aldana, Reggie Workman, Vicente Archer, Matt Penman, Matt Brewer, Joe Sanders, Steve Cardenas, Lage Lund, Mike Moreno, Gilad Hekselman, Dan Tepfer, Pete Rende and Jean-Michel Pilc, among others.

He has played in some of the world's most famous festivals, including Newport, San Francisco, Paris, Tokyo and Medellin. In 2011, 2017, 2018 and 2019, DownBeat selected him as a rising star. He was one of the only European-born musicians on the list.

Owing to the success of his albums The Turn and No Filter on vinyl, Jerome Sabbagh has also become sought after as a producer, having overseen the vinyl versions of Matt Slocum’s With Love and Sadness and Michael Weiss’ Soul Journey, as well as worked on several other releases, including the Dan Tepfer/Lee Konitz duet album Decade, and Dan Tepfer’s Eleven Cages. He recently founded the all analog label Analog Tone Factory with Pete Rende, and aims to produce more records for the label.

“French New York-based saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh has been turning heads with his series of elegant inside-out efforts over the last few years... There’s a consistent feeling of exploration on display tempered with an unforgiving discipline - a great combination.” — Peter Margasak, DownBeat

This album contains no booklet.