Instrumentation: String Quartet

Gerry Bryant joins Big Round Records with ONE DAY I’LL FLY AWAY, a map of the passage of time explored through a blend of classical, jazz, and popular music arrangements for piano. Bryant punctuates the album’s landscape with an original work, opening alongside violinist Mark Cargill in Anon in G Major, a performance equal in charm and liveliness to his reimaginings and reharmonizations of jazz standards and popular classics. True to form in uplifting the world of times past, Bryant personally honors the work of composer Florence Price in five delightful recordings, Price’s Honeysuckle at Dusk leading the album into its titular work, One Day I’ll Fly Away. Bryant reflects on his love of music today, tomorrow, and in the forever he hopes to fly to, leaving behind his music for the world to enjoy.

THE CITY OF MY SOUL is a collaboration between jazz singer Sophie Dunér, classical ensemble The Callino Quartet, and Grammy- and Juno-winning producer Michael Haas, resulting in an explosion of stylistic fusion and musical ingenuity. Dunér talents as a composer, lyricist, and vocalist hailed as a genuine triple threat (Cadence) and prolific, fearless and quirky (Jazz.com) mesh seamlessly with the classically trained ensemble, allowing the colors and personality of her songs to shine through with musical and personal significance.

Even though the tracks on BIRTH OF A CITY are loosely grouped by their titles, the recording is very much a concept album. Haney, himself an accomplished pianist who also studied composition, scored the pieces for a kind of string quartet (violin – viola – cello – double bass), interspersed by varying quantities of brass instruments and percussion. Naturally, as one would expect from this kind of music, all works are scored with exactitude – for the most part, that is. Remarkably, Haney grants the performers a great amount of improvisatory freedom – indubitably owing to his own background in jazz, the genre which definitely and definitively shines through in all his compositions.