An Organ Thing of The Day? Two releases on Cuneiform Records today, Le Tout Sur Le Tout or TST and some tightly improvised experimentation that kind of tip-toes around the edges in a forcefully delightful way and before that some rather warm, rather fluid, rather welcoming, rather cohesive jazz from Luke Stewart’s Silt Trio and an album called The Bottom that’s coming out this January

“Called “one of the 25 most influential jazz artists of his generation” by DownBeat Magazine and a member of several earth-shaking ensembles, including Irreversible Entanglements and Heroes Are Gang Leaders, polymathic bassist Luke Stewart, a creative catalyst on the Washington D.C. (and beyond) music scene for almost two decades, introduces his protean trio with Chicago drum legend Chad Taylor and powerhouse DC saxophonist Brian Settles.

A casual observer of the Washington D.C. music scene could easily get the mistaken impression that there are four or five guys coincidentally named Luke Stewart playing leading roles in a disparate array of musical communities. In fact, Stewart is a singular, uncontainable artist whose work as a bassist, saxophonist, producer, broadcaster, and all-around mover and shaker has deepened and extended the District’s legacy as a hotbed for creative music.

Given his many pursuits, a single album can only capture a small portion of Stewart’s oceanic sonic continuum, but The Bottom offers a deep dive into a particularly inviting pool with his loose and limber trio making their debut here.

A highly cohesive triumvirate in close communion, the band plays with the conversational ease of longtime, comfortable friends. Untethered to any particular stylistic convention, particularly bebop’s head-solo-head format, the music’s ebb and flow feels utterly in the moment”.

“I approached the recording session as closely as possible to playing a set, arranging the sequence with that in mind,” says Stewart, who was born and raised in Mississippi. “Like a set compositions are coupled by moments of free improvisation, but that free improv is contextualized by what happened before and after. It’s a journey, and the recording session reflects that.” 

.

TST, Le Tout Sur Le Tout, a band founded in January 1994, apparently founded during the New Jazz Festival On Tour ’94, Switzerland.

“Through the initiative of Jacques Demierre (piano, keyboard), the group was comprised of Sylvie Courvoisier (piano, keyboard), Gergely Suto (clarinets), Adrien Kessler (double bass, voice), and Andreas Valvini (drums), who was replaced by Jim Meneses in 1995. TST are comprised of musicians coming from various backgrounds, jazz, contemporary music, rock. experimental music.

“TST’s music is based on the listening skills, openness and curiosity of its musicians, combining the power of rock and the energy of improvised music, experimentation and song, strict writing and free improvisation, electric and acoustic sound. All the compositions are based on Jacques Demierre’s compositions, reworked in collaboration with the musicians.

Originally Recorded live ON November 7th, 1995 in L’Usine, Geneva, Switzerland and just released (re-released?) on the always worthy of your time Cuneiform Records. More details via Bandcamp