Most Peculiar Lage Lund with Sullivan Fortner, Matt Brewer & Tyshawn Sorey

• 1 Cigarettes 05:00
• 2 Trees 05:18
• 3 Circus Island 06:22
• 4 Warsaw 07:26
• 5 Elephants 04:57
• 6 Stone Age 06:15
• 7 Lost In Your Hometown 06:07
• 8 Antarctica 06:50
• 9 Bad Acrobat 06:21
• 10 Horses 05:01
• Total Runtime 59:37

Info for Most Peculiar

The back story for Lage Lund's sixth Criss Cross recording dates to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Lund - a native of Skien, Norway who'd lived in the U.S. since 1995 - had just returned to his homeland with his wife and two daughters. With school on hiatus, the family had to improvise an at-home curriculum. "My wife and I made it up on the fly," Lund recalls three years later. "One day the theme was learning about elephants, another day it was 'Ancient Egypt' - completely random." In conjunction with these lessons, Lund established a daily ritual whereby he spent an hour or so writing a tune based on the theme du jour, another hour to 90 minutes recording it, and another two hours creating and editing a one-minute video - the better to fit within Instagram guidelines - from public domain GIFs. Over the course of five or six weeks, Lund created a playlist of 36 videos, which he uploaded to YouTube.

"It was a mental health project," Lund says. "With touring gone and no one to play with, I wanted to give myself a task and feel at the end of the day I'd done something tangible. To pull it off, I dealt with short forms, mostly AABA structure, between 8 and 16 bars. Also, for the first time since my early twenties, I had an abundance of time to practice, which allowed me to delve into things - voice leading experiments, for example - that weren't necessarily oriented towards getting ready for the next gig, the next tour, the next recording, but which interest me for the long term. It was a bit like going to an artist retreat or residency."

Fast forward to the fall of 2021: Lund was back in the saddle, primarily working with saxophonist Melissa Aldana. Soon thereafter, Criss Cross owner Jerry Teekens called to ascertain his interest in making another album. For Lund, 45 when the Most Peculiar session transpired in June 2022, the offer was an opportunity to reunite with a band he launched in 2014. Pianist Sullivan Fortner (35) and drummer Tyshawn Sorey (41), both among the most gifted practitioners ever to improvise on their respective instruments, contributed their unique mojo to Lund's 2019 Criss-Cross release, Terrible Animals. Virtuoso bassist Matt Brewer (39), played on Lund's first leader date in 2006, had Lund play guitar on his own Criss Cross debut (Mythology-Criss 1373), and recently played on a Lund trio covers recital.

Lage Lund, guitar
Sullivan Fortner, piano
Matt Brewer, double bass
Tyshawn Sorey, drums

Lage Lund
is acclaimed as one of the finest guitarists of his generation, and one of the more compelling jazz artists today. A regular in the “Rising star – Guitar” category in the Downbeat Critic’s Poll, he has been hailed by Pat Metheny as a favorite young guitarist, and is “all music and all soul” according to Russell Malone - one of the judges who awarded Lund top prize in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition.

Armed with a growing and impressive body of original compositions, and mastery of the standard repertoire - Lund swings with great authority displaying a staggering harmonic sophistication and a singularly fluid voice as a soloist. He also brings a “casually magnetic” presence to the stage, “channeling reticence into a whisper-quiet mystique” and "balances his abundant proficiencies with an aesthetic of gleaming calm" (New York Times).

Born and raised in Norway, Lund relocated to Boston after high school on a scholarship to Berklee College of Music. In 2002 he moved to New York and soon became the first electric guitarist ever to enroll at the Juilliard School of Music. In the years since his Monk Competition victory, he has become a sought-after sideman with the David Sanchez Quartet, the Maria Schneider Orchestra, Mark Turner, Seamus Blake and many more.

After a series of three releases featuring bassist Ben Street and drummer Bill Stewart 2019 sees the release of "Terrible Animals”. Joined by a never-before-convened, top-of-the-pyramid rhythm section (Sullivan Fortner, piano; Larry Grenadier, bass;Tyshawn Sorey, drums) it is the most compositionally ambitious and daringly performed of Lage Lund's five albums on Criss Cross. Ten far-flung originals that elicit the full measure of their creativity , spurring Lund - who makes ingenious use of effects within his flow - to some of his most dynamic and varied playing on record.

Through frequent appearances and tours stateside and throughout Europe, Asia and around the world, Lund has ascended to the highest ranks as a performer and a creative force. He is among those setting the agenda for jazz improvisation in the 21st century.

"Of the younger cats, Lage is THE one. He's a wonderful player. Scary actually!” Kurt Rosenwinkel

Tyshawn Sorey
Newark-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey (b. 1980) is celebrated for his incomparable virtuosity, effortless mastery and memorization of highly complex scores, and an extraordinary ability to blend composition and improvisation in his work. He has performed nationally and internationally with his own ensembles, as well as artists such as John Zorn, Vijay Iyer, Roscoe Mitchell, Muhal Richard Abrams, Wadada Leo Smith, Marilyn Crispell, George Lewis, Claire Chase, Steve Lehman, Jason Moran, Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton, and Myra Melford, among many others. The New York Times has praised Sorey for his instrumental facility and aplomb, “he plays not only with gale-force physicality, but also a sense of scale and equipoise”; The Wall Street Journal notes Sorey is, “a composer of radical and seemingly boundless ideas.” The New Yorker recently noted that Sorey is “among the most formidable denizens of the in-between zone…An extraordinary talent who can see across the entire musical landscape.” Sorey has composed works for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the International Contemporary Ensemble, soprano Julia Bullock, PRISM Quartet, JACK Quartet, TAK Ensemble, the McGill-McHale Trio, bass-baritone Davóne Tines, Alarm Will Sound, the Louisville Orchestra, and tenor Lawrence Brownlee with Opera Philadelphia in partnership with Carnegie Hall, as well as for countless collaborative performers. His music has been performed in notable venues such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Village Vanguard, the Ojai Music Festival, the Newport Jazz Festival, the Kimmel Center, and the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center. Sorey has received support for his creative projects from The Jerome Foundation, The Shifting Foundation, Van Lier Fellowship, and was named a 2017 MacArthur fellow and a 2018 United States Artists Fellow.

Matt Brewer
was born in Oklahoma City but spent most of his youth in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Born into a musical family, Matt was surrounded by music from an early age, both his father and grandfather being jazz musicians, and his mother an avid music lover and radio DJ (who, even before Matt was born, would play classic jazz albums for him). After graduating from the Interlochen Arts Academy, Matt attended the inagural class of The Juilliard Jazz Program and studied with bassists Rodney Whitaker and Ben Wolfe. After spending two years at Juilliard he decided to leave school to make time for his busy touring schedule. Since then he has worked with artists such as Greg Osby, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Lee Konitz, David Sanchez, Terence Blanchard, Antonio Sanchez, Vijay Iyer, Adam Rogers, Steve Coleman, Dave Binney, Aaron Parks, Jeff “Tain” Watts, and many others. He recently recorded his second album as a leader on the Criss Cross Jazz label. He is an adjunct faculty member at The New School, and has been a frequent guest artist/teacher at the Banff Center.

Sullivan Fortner
is a 28-year-old jazz pianist, composer and arranger from New Orleans who has already proven his extraordinary talent on several occasions. He began playing the piano at the age of seven and won Cable Cox's "Amazing Kid" Award when he was only eleven. Two years later he enrolled in the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and was top of his graduating class.

He continued his musical education at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music with a Bachelor's degree in Jazz Performance and at the Manhattan School of Music with a Master's degree in Jazz Performance. He supplemented his experience by studying with jazz piano masters such as Peter Martin, Fred Hersch, Jason Moran and Phil Markowitz and playing in the bands of Stefon Harris, Etienne Charles, Roy Hargrove and Christian Scott, among others.

Sullivan Fortner won the 2015 Cole Porter Fellowship Award in the jazz category presented by the American Pianists Association.

This album contains no booklet.