The Dylan Jack Quartet will release a holiday recording titled “Winter Panes” on Nov. 15. Following up its Nosferatu-themed silent film adventure and live concert experience “Eine Quartett des Grauens” (2023), the Dylan Jack Quartet could have gone any number of directions.
Half-jokingly, the Massachusetts-based drummer calls the group’s fifth release, “Winter Panes,” a “holiday album.” It is the first DJQ album to feature no original music. The impetus was an invite: on a recent tour, one venue asked the group back for a holiday concert.
Jack and DJQ stalwarts Jerry Sabatini (trumpet), Eric Hofbauer (guitar/effects) and Tony Leva (double bass) began to brainstorm “less common ways of looking at the winter landscape,” the drummer recalled. Feeling the cold took no imagination: “We recorded in January,” Jack said. “.
.. It was, like, two degrees the next day.
It was so cold. We recorded in a church, and when I walked up the stairs, there was this window outside, just covered in ice, so beautiful, with a chandelier hanging above it. I took a picture and it just had to be the album cover.
Then I thought about naming the album after this picture in some way, with different cultures representing these different panes. If you look out this window, you might see the more eastern side of it, maybe, but it’s still the same landscape no matter what — part of this bigger, larger window.” The first two DJQ albums, “Diagrams” (2017) and “The Tale of the Twelve-Foot Man” (2020), documented Jack’s emerging compositional voice and established a sonic signature for the band.
Hofbauer’s full-bodied, close-miked guitar sparks vibrant exchange with Sabatini’s horn (or Todd Brunel’s reeds on Diagrams), a setting in which Leva and Jack are free to weave in and out rhythmically and texturally. Any instrument might offer an extended solo passage or split off into duos (akin to the space Hofbauer and Jack explored on their 2019 duo release “Remains of Echoes”). Hofbauer deepens his idiosyncratic approach to electronic effects on “Winter Panes” as well, foregrounding an acoustic tone while triggering dramatic echo and fuzztone timbres that seem to lurk in the shadows.
Peering through the first pane, one encounters “New Africa,” by the late Grachan Moncur III, in a pedal tone-based, viscerally grooving DJQ treatment with Sabatini spitting fire in an almost post-bop vein. Jack’s point of reference is the version from Archie Shepp’s “Kwanza,” recorded in 1968-69, released in 1974. “I was struck by how Kwanza was not necessarily a Kwanzaa record,” Jack said, “and yet it embodied this idea of community with the sound of this unusual big band.
” James Brown’s “Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto” is a Hofbauer choice, a staple in the guitarist’s house come holiday time. The DJQ’s version is playful, driven by Jack’s locked-in groove under a swinging ostinato bass figure, muted trumpet background riff, and wah-wah from Hofbauer on the main melody. Sabatini is in fine form on his leadoff solo, followed by Hofbauer’s authoritative statement, more tonally based than “New Africa,” but just as fresh and rhythmically inventive.
Along with the Moncur piece, Jack brought in a rhythmically skewed version of Vince Guaraldi’s “Skating” from “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” and a tight arrangement of “Marley and Marley,” the big Statler & Waldorf number from “A Muppet Christmas Carol” (a seasonal must-watch in Jack’s household). Sabatini’s lead playing is Bubber Miley-esque, supported by Hofbauer in a role split between accompanist and co-soloist, all animated by Leva in rock solid accord with Jack’s supple, improvisational beat. “Skating” is in three, but Jack’s arrangement layers four on top, “a polymeter going over the bar line,” he said.
“I was thinking about how I might skate a little less, uh, glamorously than if the melody were nice and smooth. I wanted it to feel almost jolting.” The poise and invention in Jack’s three-quarters swing feel is the common thread, with riveting solos from Hofbauer, Leva, Sabatini and Jack in turn.
“Las Mañanitas” (the beloved mornings), a Mexican cultural staple sung on birthdays, Mother’s Day and other occasions, was adapted by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass for a 1968 release simply titled “Christmas Album.” Sabatini’s arrangement, one of three for “Winter Panes,” jettisons orchestral bells and soft-rock beat for something brighter and merrier, with an extended solo guitar intro and a spirited round of Hofbauer/Jack trading with Leva solidly keeping time. Sabatini also chose “Ocho Kandelikas,” a Sephardic Hanukkah number, slow and stately at first, with a declaratory trumpet intro rich in melodic ornamentation.
After Leva’s solo, the lively tango feel comes to a pregnant pause, and the gradual and ultimately frenetic accelerando begins in the authentic Jewish celebratory style. The versatility on display is striking, not least on the traditional “Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow,” another Sabatini pick, which closes the album in rousing major-key spirits, with some of the folkiest guitar language from Hofbauer to date. Jack is a percussionist, improviser, composer, educator, and organizer participating in multiple genres within the New England music scene.
As a performer, he divides his attention between playing as a sideman with some of the region’s top improvisers and leading his main creative outlet, the Dylan Jack Quartet. Jack has released six recordings as a band leader or co-leader and one film score (an original version of the 1922 film “Nosferatu”). Jack is also the director and curator for the Not So Silent Film series in Providence, Rhode Island, which focuses on improvising along with public domain silent films.
As an educator, Jack is part of the percussion and jazz and contemporary music departments at the Groton Hill Music Center in Groton, Massachusetts, where he teaches private lessons, group classes and creative ensembles. He is also part of the affiliated faculty at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches multiple sections of The History of Jazz..
