Johnny E

SLUG Magazine Reptet - Do This! (Monktail Records) Street: 06.16 Reptet = Thelonius Monk + Mingus Big Band A six-member, Seattle based jazz band that draws from a conglomerate of influences from Gil Evans-era Miles Davis, salsa, reggae and rock n’ roll, Reptet uses the big band format by playing themes together while making room for solos, similar to SLAJO. All of the players have solid chops. They can give a nod to the masters while adding their own studious flourishes. Reptet combines tight compositions with in-your-face improvisations, like the final minutes of the title track. As well as the regular jazz instruments, they pull out everything from a juju seed rattle to wooden ratchets, a bull moose call, frogs and train whistles. The most prevalent influences are Monk and Charles Mingus. They use some of those loopy Monk melodies that are as wobbly as a spinning top, while Mingus’ soulful, slow ballads are invoked in “H.R.” If you listen to jazz at all, these guys are worth checking out. –Spencer Jenkins

All Music Guide Reptet - Do This! (Monktail Records 2006) When the subject of avant-garde jazz scenes comes up in a conversation, the place that is often discussed the most - at least among New Yorkers - is downtown Manhattan (as in the East Village, Soho, and Tribeca). But avant-jazz activity certainly isn't limited to the Big Apple; not at all. There is plenty of it in Boston, Chicago, and many places in different parts of Europe, and Seattle is the city that, in 1999, saw the formation of Reptet. Do This!, the six-member group's second album, is not radically avant-garde, It is mildly avant-garde, and by avant-garde jazz standards, the material is relatively accessible. But at the same time, no one will mistake Do This! for a group of hard bop-oriented, standards-obsessed Young Lions who only play in the tradition. Do This! has it share of abstraction, quirkiness, and eccentricity, and while the material has been influenced by straight-ahead bop and swing, it is by no means enslaved by the tradition. The album favors an inside/outside approach - generally more inside than outside - and the group's long list of influences ranges from Charles Mingus to Gil Evans to Thelonious Monk to Ornette Coleman. The solos of trumpeter Samantha Boshnack, trombonist Ben OShea, and saxophonists Tobi Stone and Izaak Mills can be very free-spirited and stream-of-consciousness, but Do This! never becomes chaotic, and one of the album's strong points (in addition to the improvising and composing) is Reptet's cohesive ensemble arrangements. Listeners who have enjoyed the ensemble work of Boston's Either/Orchestra and other inside/outside outfits of the '90s and 2000s should have no problem getting into this early 2006 recording. ~by Alex Henderson~

I saw these guys in Seattle in 2003. Schlippenbach opened some amazing Monk stream-of-consciousness solo playing that blew my mind! I don't think he had it planned out at all...just skipping from one monk to the next, seamlessly - some of his more obscure compositions to boot. He's an incredible keysmith. Can't wait to hear 'Monk Casino'.

This whole ordeal must be hard-on her.

I like Guillen.

Reptet By Doug Ramsey, Arts Journal June, 19th 2006 The album the squeaking-wheel publicist kept plugging, nicely but persistently, is Do This! by a Seattle band, The Reptet. In common with Harry Allen's group, they do not have a piano. Nor do they have a guitar, which leaves the sextet free of a chording instrument to provide harmonic guidance. That leads to some soloists being cast adrift on the waters of free jazz without a paddle, but there is a redeeming sense of joy, whimsy and almost reckless abandon in much of the skilled ensemble writing and playing. Some of it has echoes of Hindemith, Milhaud, and, in keeping with that line of musical thought, voicings remarkably like those in certain pieces by the Dave Brubeck Octet. There are also elements of street-corner brass bands, third stream composers and the Charles Mingus of Tijuana Moods, to single out only three of the disparate influences I think I hear. Much of the writing is by the trumpeter Samantha Boshnack, with additional pieces by reed players Tobi Stone and Izaak Mill and bassist Benjamin Verdier. The other members are trombonist Ben O'Shea and drummer John Ewing. Stone, Mills, O'Shea and Ewing have stimulating solo moments. I admit that I was moved to listen to The Reptet by, in addition to the phone calls, the fact that four of the compositions are titled "Zeppo," "Harpo," "Chico" and "Groucho." I am happy to report that they live up to their names. And, yes, "Harpo" gets an introduction by an actual harp. I also like the occasional unexpected, but quite discreet, group and individual vocal touches that include shouts and moans. Great fun.

Friday, June 16, 2006 Judge this album by its cover? Do that! By Paul de Barros - Seattle Times jazz critic The grunge era turned Seattle into a magnet for musicians, not just because it was on fire commercially, but because of a creative outlook that combined both whimsy and darkness. The Reptet, a Seattle jazz band founded by a grunge-era immigrant from Philadelphia, reflects that Northwest sensibility nicely on a new album, "Do This!" The album has been attracting attention worldwide because of its cover by the late, great Jim Flora, whose playful yet scary designs graced classic jazz albums in the '40s and '50s by artists such as Louis Armstrong, Shorty Rogers and Gene Krupa. The Reptet celebrates the release of "Do This!" at 8 p.m. today at Consolidated Works ($8; 206-381-3218). Amy Denio opens with a set for accordion and voice. The "Do This!" album art is a textbook example of the maxim "It never hurts to ask." "I started doing a little research on the Internet and I discovered who Jim Flora was," said Reptet drummer John Ewing, "and I thought, 'Why don't I just write the guy who runs the Jim Flora.com Website on a lark?' I got an e-mail response almost immediately: 'You're right. It doesn't hurt to ask. Call me.' " The image for the album has many typical Flora elements: black ink with a one-color wash; dismembered body parts (eyes, arms, mouths); forms that suggest wild animals (octopus, bird, snake, lizard) and random geometric shapes. Beyond being a good publicity move, the Flora artwork works well with the Reptet's music, particularly on the raucous title tune and a series of four songs inspired by the Marx Brothers by trumpet player Samantha Boshnack. Boshnack's tight, buoyant writing for this pianoless chamber sextet's four wind instruments (two brass, two reeds) is a highlight, recalling West Coast arrangers like Rogers. I especially like the way the flighty flute and groaning bowed bass capture Groucho's comic, opposite sides. The elegiac "Harpo" begins, appropriately, with a snippet of harp music from a scratchy old record. The tune also features a strong trombone solo by Ben O'Shea, though it's one of the few solos on the album that come up to the level of the writing. Several passages in which players improvise at the same time — double and triple "solos," if you will — are more effective than individual solos, especially when they're done over jaunty, staccato riffs. "Do This!" and the current Reptet lineup came about when reed player Tobi Stone, who had left the band and been replaced by Izaak Mills, rejoined for a one-off gig at last year's Earshot Jazz Festival. "All the composers had to rearrange the tunes for one more horn," said Ewing. "The show was so much fun, it re-energized the whole group." The Reptet began in the late '90s as a repertory quartet — hence the name — but soon evolved into a creative force. It is part of a loosely-defined, 16-year-old collective of 22 players called the Monktail Creative Music Concern. Inspired by experimentalists such as Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Music (AACM) and Holland's Instant Composers Pool (ICP), Monktail was founded by two other Philadelphians, bassist John Seman and drummer Mark Ostrowski. Ewing, who says he admires drummer Art Blakey for his straight-ahead swing and "heart," feels jazz needs to look beyond its past. "If you box yourself in and just play in the tradition of what was happening in the U.S. until the '70s, you're missing an essential part of your education." Amen to that. Check out the Reptet. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/arts...263_jazz16.html

Happy (belated) B-day K!

Saturday, June 10, 2006 Sending peace to Iraq Children help spread message of love, friendship By DEBERA CARLTON HARRELL Seattle Post-Intelligencer The Iraqi doctor sat on a corner of the stage, listening and smiling as Seattle grade-schoolers sang for the orphans of Baghdad. We are children of peace. We are the children of the world. But when they sang the words in Arabic, Enas Mohamed broke down. It was not just the lyrics, but the innocent faces smiling back. Nah-nu awladdul salaam, Nah-nu awladdul aalaam. Mohamed, a research coordinator at the University of Washington, cannot block her emotions when she thinks of friends and family still in Iraq, and the devastating effect of war on children there. "When I see these beautiful faces, I remember the same thing in the faces of Iraqi children," Mohamed said Friday, after the students' bilingual performance. Next week, Mohamed leaves for her hometown of Baghdad, where she'll be visiting children in hospitals and orphanages. "They need so much love," she said. "When I arrive, I don't know where to start, which one to hug." Mohamed will bring compassion beyond her own. She will take a videotape of the 200 Salmon Bay Elementary students singing peace songs in English and Arabic, along with the children's drawings and personal messages of goodwill. Mohamed is hoping to soften Iraqi hearts that she says have turned hard toward the United States. "I feel so torn," she says. "As a doctor, life is so precious to me. When I live here, I see American lives and wonderful people. ... But Iraqis are not seeing the picture I am seeing. "Many think Americans are greedy monsters who just want oil. I am trying to help them, especially children, see Americans the way I see them. I am thinking about the future." It is particularly difficult for thousands of orphaned children, Mohamed said, whose only association with Americans is through soldiers or occasional relief workers. Mary K. McNeill, an artist in residence with Seattle Public Schools, wrote one of the taped songs, "We Are the Children of the World," with students five years ago to help them deal with post-9/11 trauma. McNeill said she asked the kids to think about "their deepest hope" and "what connects all the children of the world?" Singing -- and peace -- emerged as "something we could share," McNeill said. "It had to be something universal," she said. "Our humanity is a shared humanity." A mutual friend hooked up McNeill and Mohamed, who thought the same song could help traumatized Iraqi children. In a videotaped message translated into Arabic by Mohamed, Salmon Bay fifth-grader Bailey Nurmia said: "Hi, my name's Bailey. It must be really hard when you've lost so much. I wish peace for you and that the war will end." Rachel Berner-Hays, 10, said, "Once it's over, I hope we get to be friends." And classmate Eliza Baumeister added: "I feel really bad for you that you have to live through this. When the war is over, I'd like to meet you and shake your hand." Mohamed said there is no doubt in her mind that the messages will give Iraqi children hope. "When they hear these songs, they will feel the love and friendship," she said. "And these drawings, I know, they will put them under their pillows." _____________________________________________ FOR MORE INFORMATION www.childrensingforpeace.org For an audio clip of the singing, go to blog.seattlepi.nwsource .com/audio/wearechildrenofpeace.mp3

Nice! got any old dick allen or richie ashburn?

Nice touch Al. In blue letters to boot. And I love that Jesus quote. What a beautiful expression of truth.

Ahhh, what's a matter with these kids? They look like sweethearts.

This is a nice one too. I love the 73' topps.

Too bad it's not his rookie. This is one of my all time favorite baseball cards.

As I said, politics has been part of this board from the very beginning. And for those who don't like it they can simply block it out. How does that equate to ballclubs (that play on publically funded ballfields) hiring only Christians and using the field for prayer meetings or a desire on my part to keep religion and politics out of the game of baseball? I'm glad you found it to be funny, but again, it's simply a false analogy.

Then what was your point? And I don't mean that in a confrontational way. If explaining how your analogy is a false one misses the point, than do tell. And why were you surprised? I'm always trying to find ways to bring people together. I'm a lover not a fighter.

How is this different than "Please keep religion (and politics for that matter) off of jazz bulletin boards. It's the only place left where people of all faiths, political persuasions, or sexual orientations can come together and just enjoy jazz talk." There is a way to set the board up so you don't even know the politics section exists. Besides, a politics section was part of the Bluenote Board of which many of the original Organissimo members migrated.

Any questions?

Is it Christian bashing to want freedom from religion? Listen, I have no problem with people worshiping anyway they choose. As long as it is on their dime and in their space. In Seattle the people voted down the stadium twice, only to have the city council override them and it was built (with tax payer money) anyway. I'm a baseball fan and I wanted the stadium so you didn't see me out in the street protesting about it, but for a multi-billion dollar industry to bilk billions from the tax payers, then turn the stadiums into quasi-mega-churches is just plain wrong. You think if a team was signing only Jewish players and having siddur guided prayer services in the outfield after games the same "Christians" would be defending this? Of course they wouldn't. It's a bully tactic because Christians make up the majority in this country. Then they want to turn around and play victim. Gimme a break! Please keep religion (and politics for that matter) out of baseball. It's the only place left where people of all faiths, political persuasions, or sexual orientations can come together and just be Americans. We're losing all the things that used to unite us in this country and it's because of the pigheaded bully tactics taken on by the dominant white Anglo-Saxon Christians who run everything and the mendacious politicians who exploit people's ignorance for political gain. That said, it's gonna take a lot more than a few prayer meetings in the Braves outfield or a few Rocky Mountain dumb shits for me to boycott baseball. I'd go coo-coo bananas without it. Go M's!!!!

Reptet: Movin' Ahead in the Tradition BY PETER MONAGHAN Reptet is a traditional jazz band.Not so much because you hear, coursing through their forward-reaching music, the strains of Dixieland and many other later developments from it.The trad, swing, and bop elements are there, but Reptet is traditional in a simpler sense.When the sextet's four horns and solid rhythm section hoot and blast, weaving and walloping like a sideshow pugilist, they convey a sense that Reptet has engaged both the history of jazz styles and the art form's constant quest for innovation. The vitality of the present and the promise of the future pervade their work as essentially as does a reverence for the past.And the results are impressive. At times, in their live performances, they appear a juggernaut jazz band, arresting, compelling, and just plain cranked-up. And they show, on their just-released album, Do This!(Monktail Records) that they have many musical ideas at their command. It's an assured, dynamic effort that, like Reptet's live shows, relies on originals penned by four of the sextet's members. Do This! is one of the most convincing albums of the last several years from Seattle jazz players. It manages to capture the thrill of the band's live performances, even as it operates within the very different dimensions of the studio. Their audience-friendly live shows are at times ragged affairs that, at their finest moments, sharpen from an unruly onrush to a concerted campaign, firing on several fronts, with the soloists in sympathy and the rhythm section as taut as rebar. Their recording displays similar spirit, but appeals less to the rawness and power of clubgoing than the pleasures of careful listening. The cuts range. There's Tobi Stone's jauntily good-humored 'Bad Reed Blues' complete with squawks from said reed. There is Samantha Boshnack's set of hommages to the brothers Marx, of which 'Harpo', introduced with guest Bronn Journey's harp, salutes the most tenderly odd of the mob. And there's the soulful sorrow of Izaak Mills's 'H.R.' Stone and Mills play a range of saxes, bass clarinets, flutes, and assorted other instruments. (In live shows Mills also wears odd hats, jumps about quite a bit, and ensures that getting out of the house is fun.) Boshnack plays trumpets - slided and slideless. Ben O'Shea is a captivating trombonist. Holding it all together (with the aid of the horn players' evident practiced cohesion and attention to each other), are versatile drummer John Ewing and commanding, thrumming bassist Benjamin Verdier. For its individual contributions and group cohesion, Reptet is a band that deserves attention. It also appears ready for the encouragement, and provocation, of billing alongside much better-known, "national" acts. The members of Reptet are all associated with the Monktail Creative Music Concern, a loose aggregation of jazz players who have a toe or two inside the mainstream and the rest of their selves in the many meandering tributaries of progressive jazz. The consortium's members have formed mix-and-match lineups for their various purposes, most of which relate to that curious impulse of jazz to move the tradition ahead because, after all, doing so is the tradition. The Reptet lineup of today results from a process of pruning and figgering that goes back several years to woodshedding that John Ewing organized in the late 90s. Members came and went, and in some cases, such as bassist Ben Verdier's, returned. One alumnus is trumpeter Chris Littlefield, now with Carl Denson's Tiny Universe. A crucial turn, for Reptet, was the moment when its members decided to replace a departing pianist with a trombonist, with the result that Reptet ventured on with no chordal instrument. At first, says Samantha Boshnack, one of the band's four composers, "I was a bit nervous about composing for that lineup, but the instrumentation has opened up a lot of new ways of writing." Three trombonists later, Ben O'Shea became a fixture of Reptet - a particularly sinuous and searching one. At last year's Earshot Jazz Festival, the band performed with great spirit, and then another crucial lineup change took place: Saxophonist Tobi Stone, who had been playing with the Tiptons all-women saxophone combo, as she still is, returned. That provided Reptet with real clout up front, and enough skilled horns that none predominates, and a sense of a shared undertaking emerges. "More than anything, with the passage of time and the introduction of new players, it went from a group that was seeking an identity to something that had some kind of identity," says Ewing. Now, with the lineup set and the players settled and in synch, the group's composers have a distinctive lineup around which to frame their work. Adopting an all-originals format has long been a way to raise the eyebrows of jazz's more hidebound listeners, but it has also been the natural way to go for players who - not to harp on the point - wish to show that tradition is a progressive, not static or reified process. For Mills, playing originals has a simple rationale: "Standards are music by people I don't know." And: "As a player it's just not as rewarding to play old music that other people played better." The opportunity to play originals is "probably why I stick around," he says. Ewing agrees: "When you play music by people you don't know, it's more an interpretation, versus a collaboration. When you can get it straight from the person who wrote it, it's happening at the moment." In its ethos, Boshnack suggests, "Reptet is like a rock band. Everybody brings in stuff and then we work things out as a group. I never come in with what I want - I have an idea and everybody molds it." The molding has been going on for some time, and it shows to great effect both in concerts and on disc. Part of the approach is to embrace some of the spirit of free jazz, but to retain charts. Says Mills: "Pre-planned, organized music is fun, but in a jazz context you too often end up with people who are reluctant to play organized things because they're too cool for school." In fact, he says, sticking with written charts that nonetheless provide room for improvisation and interplay provides a solid basis for other kinds of innovation. For example, the band can then toy with the sonic opportunities that new technologies increasingly permit on stage and on disc. He says: "We're open to other recording capabilities, besides just playing in a room with two mics - overdubbing, different recording sounds, electronic sounds..." "Another strength of the group, I think," chimes in Ben Verdier, "is that we play some things that are very accessible, and some that push the boundary more. It's a great thing to bring people along who might not listen to the more out sorts of things." Interestingly, the group's writing sustains the feel of accessible "tunes" even as it often is intricate and conveys a fascinating sense of jazz history. A comparison, in that sense, might be the sinewy, braided, old-and-new sounds that Henry Threadgill conjures from his distinctive bands. Reptet's version of this - Mills's funny hats, etc. - is in similar spirit to Threadgill's summoning of the circus, the sideshow, and the barroom. "We're definitely not a sad group," says Ewing. "And we're not a sip-your-martini and pontificate-about-whatever type of group." Says Verdier: "We do well in situations where we can feel the focus of the audience on us. I enjoy getting to play jazz without what Izaak likes to call "jazz pressure." There's more expectation of formality that comes with saying your group plays jazz."

And let's not forget the great BERT WILSON in Olympia Washington.

Of course.

"Reptet has engaged both the history of jazz styles and the art form's constant quest for innovation. Do This! is one of the most convincing albums of the last several years from Seattle jazz players." ~Earshot Jazz~ On sale now: reptet.com (all $ goes to us) CDBaby (middlemen involved) Amazon (bigger middlemen involved)

I don't blame ya' We're sending out promo copies tomorrow morning. I'm eager to see how people respond to it. It is very different than our first release. Not just because Tobi and I are the only original members left, but because the instrumentation has changed so much. We are no longer a piano/sax quartet. We now are a four horn/bass/drums sextet...alto, tenor & bari saxes, Bb clarinet, bass clarinet, flute, alto flute, trombone, trumpet, slide trumpet, flugelhorn (and that's just the horns), we also have a shit load of percussion, a harpist (special guest), acoustic and electric bass, electronics, and vocals. I'm more proud of this recording than anything I've ever done. I'm hoping the Flora cover will help to enthuse writers and DJ's to give it a chance, because I feel fairly confident once people hear it they'll like it. We'll see.

Buy it for the cover, cherish it for the music.