In terms of his early career preparation choices, guitarist Max Light sagaciously surrounded himself with people and opportunities that were set to yield positive outcomes. His undergrad studies at the New England Conservatory found him making the best of the Boston jazz scene, performing regularly at the iconic Wally’s Café with trumpeter Jason Palmer. An early taste of Light’s playing with Palmer can be gleaned from listening to the two volumes of Palmer’s At Wally’s (SCCD 31855/6) from 2018.
During a recent conversation with the guitarist from his current home in New York, Light called Palmer “one of the greatest trumpet players in the world.” Looking back fondly on this period, Light emphatically states, “It was the most formative musical experience I
had in my life to be in that band the last two and a half years that I lived in Boston. We played all of Jason's original music, which was super challenging, and very harmonically adventurous.”
Moving to New York, Light would complete his graduate courses at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College where he was able to avail himself to the city’s legendary jazz scene. Small classes and a focus on the music’s history would complement distinguished faculty such as David Berkman, Antonio Hart, Paul Bollenback, and Mike Moreno.
In the midst of these heady times honing his craft, Light would learn that the 2019 Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz International Jazz Competition would be returning to a focus on guitar for the first time since 2005. Light felt poised to put his hat into the ring and in the end was rewarded with a second place win. “That was a hectic and crazy period in my life,” says Light. “I got to meet Pat Metheny, John Scofield, and Lionel Loueke and it was just such a trip. The next three months proved to be super busy with opportunities that developed from the competition.”
Life has a way of throwing curve balls when we least expect them, and even as Light seemed poised to enter the next great phase of his career, the pandemic would change life for everyone. The guitarist’s debut recording, Herplusme, would be released in February of 2020 just as the world began shutting down. As Light remembers it, “Momentum [from the competition] was generated and then it just seemed like we hit a brick wall.”
Nonetheless, seeds had been sown that would blossom into the music here at hand, thanks to Light’s musical relationship with saxophonist Noah Preminger. The guitarist had met Preminger in Boston as well as appearing on his 2019 date After Life and his Steeplechase set Contemptment (SCCD 31906) cut just prior to the March 2020 shutdowns. “Back then I felt very green,” Light explains. “I couldn’t believe I was going to go into the studio and play with guys like this and the music was very challenging. It was an amazing learning experience.” Summing up his admiration for Preminger, Light adds, “Noah is one of the most unique voices on the tenor saxophone right now. He is an extremely deep musician and a great person.”
The other members of the quartet heard here had also been a frequent part of Light’s endeavors on the bandstand. “This quartet actually was Noah's band,” he explains. “We played a couple of gigs in town and then went to Europe in the fall of 2021 with Kim Cass and Dan Weiss playing all of Noah's original music. It was a great experience and I had wanted to record some of the quartet music that I had sitting around, so I thought that using this group would be a natural thing.”
Another veteran of Boston’s prestigious New England Conservatory of Music, bassist Kim Cass took up the acoustic bass while barely in his teens. With an interest in electronics and the music’s more adventurous strains, Cass has been heard with such forward-thinking leaders as Tyshawn Sorey, Bill McHenry, and John Zorn. “He's another musician that I started checking out when I was in college,” says Light. “He has this incredible solo album with upright bass and electronics that is the most beautiful and technically amazing record ever. I totally fell in love with it and then was fortunate enough to start playing with him in Noah’s quartet starting in 2016.”
As for drummer Dan Weiss, his varied experiences made him a natural for this ensemble. In addition to manning his own groups and working with New York’s finest, Weiss plays tabla drums, thanks to a connection made with Samir Chatterjee over 25 years ago via fellow drummer Jamey Haddad. “Dan is a drummer that I've looked up to almost my entire musical life, listening to his trio records when I was coming up. Getting the opportunity to play with him has been such an instructive musical experience, both technically and spiritually. “He's really one of the most focused musicians in the world both on and off the bandstand.”
Kicking off a program of all Light originals, save one from Preminger, Barney and Sid opens with unaccompanied guitar before growing into an undulating odd-metered junket. Light and Preminger speak the melody together and their combined tones are highly appealing. So too, we get to hear Preminger’s mastery of the entire range of the instrument as well as Light’s talents for building a solo. While the piece is simply titled after his cats, the structure is anything but straight-forward. “It started just as this three bar figure that';s three bars of 9/8, with a rhythm that's based on some West African rhythms,” Light explains. “In Jason Palmer's band I had often played this tune called “Ethos” that;s in nine and I learned that nine can be an incredibly deep and nuanced meter.”
A syncopated bass ostinato supports the ominous lead line of Henceforth, an original that Light refers to as “kind of a rock tune”. Cass delivers a masterful and highly musical statement as the rest of the crew offers shimmering waves of sound in support. Having initially been influenced by rock bands like AC/DC and later the metal strains of Metallica and Meshuggah, Light organically melds these influences into his highly imaginative compositions. “That one is kind of my homage to rock music, but it’s also my kind of rock music, you know?” With a cagey melody delivered in unison by Light and Preminger, Luftrauser arrives at its up tempo swing from the get-go, with Light soaring high above the clouds during his opening gambit. Weiss is also in the spotlight during his freely-built solo. An active gamer since his childhood, Light titled the piece after a video game where you serve as a fighter pilot. “I was playing this game and I was really into the music of Ornette Coleman at the same time,” says Light. “The form itself is an eleven and a half bar blues basically, but with all these harmonic substitutions. So it's a bunch of different ideas mashed together.”
Cass starts off Subjective Objective with the rest of the band ultimately establishing a skittish backdrop that Light resourcefully uses during the course of his beguiling statement. “This just came out of an idea I had during the pandemic when I was spending a lot of time alone on my instrument in a different sort of way,” Light explains. “I was just trying to get more comfortable with moving around the dotted quarter note within an odd time signature, and I thought, what better way to do it but to make a really hard bass line with a hard melody that's floating over the bar line.”
One could straightforwardly call Animals the ballad tune of the date. Preminger’s burnished tone is on display as he nuances each phrase of this gentle melody, Light then picking up the lead with his own mix of single note runs and chordal punctuations. Originally a college assignment, the influences of Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, and author Frank O’Hara came together to create this lovely tone poem. “The first draft is the last draft with this one,” states Light. “I wrote this tune in one sitting and it just came out fully formed.”
The remaining two originals also take their inspiration from the things that make up Light’s wide-ranging interests and inspirations. If You Could, Would You? puts the focus on the guitarist’s cagey interactions with Weiss. “Written in 2012, that';'s probably the oldest tune here and it comes from another video game I was playing when I was a teen.” An up tempo number that speaks with Light’s characteristic stop-start accent, Half Marathon is a contrafact for John Coltrane’s “26-2”. “I was trying to challenge myself and come up with stuff to do during the pandemic and I had this idea of the title being written with a division sign, so twenty-six divided by two. So that would make the meter be thirteen,” Light explains. “Since a marathon is 26.2 miles long, that would also be thirteen when divided in half, thus the title.”
The closing Preminger original High or Booze again illuminates the pleasing chemistry shared by Light and the saxophonist, something that is rare to hear these days. “The title comes from the fact that it’s a minor blues,” says Light. Just say “minor blues” over and over and you’ll get the idea. “I think it's also Noah thinking about how musicians have moved away from an extremely substance-focused lifestyle in a way,” Light adds. “He always talks about how guys are now instead talking about coffee and yoga.”
While destiny might have determined the arrival time of this full accounting of Max Light’s immeasurable skills as a composer and musician, all good things are worth the wait. “I feel very fortunate to live in this community of musicians where you can put the most challenging music in front of them and there’s no limit to their ability to read what’s on paper and give it shape. Every composition can be an exercise in challenging yourself, but also challenging yourself to make beautiful music out of it.”
C. Andrew Hovan
March 2023