Chris Morrissey - Impact Winter Formal (2021)

Described by Chicago Reader as “casually clearing the way for one potential path for jazz to progress into the future”, Chris Morrisey is a musician with an uncanny ability to blend styles and genres. Informed as much by alternative music of the 90s like Elliot Smith and Bjork as contemporary Jazz of that era, it was the presence of Happy Apple, the hyper original punk Jazz group from Minnesota (Dave King, Michael Lewis and Erik Fratzke) that installed his sense of what was possible in music.

This new set of work, his fifth record as a leader, represents his most authentic blend of all his influences in one melting pot. Here’s a musician as adept as a singer-songwriter as an improvising Jazz musician and composer.

With Impact Winter Formal, he gives up on straddling two genre worlds and instead has both feet firmly planted in a totally new one that is personal and looking-forward, complex but immediate, tuneful and inspiring. The result is brilliant, engaging and emotive featuring some of the most interesting and creative contemporary musicians in New York including Philip Dizack, Ryan Ferreira, Dan Rieser, Jon Cowherd, Josh Dion, Grey McMurray and Jason Rigby.

Chris Morrissey - Bass and Singing
Philip Dizack - Trumpet
Ryan Ferreira - Guitar
Dan Rieser - Drums
Jon Cowherd - Piano

Guest Personnel
Josh Dion - Drums (The Indigos)
Grey McMurray - Guitar (The Indigos)
Jason Rigby - Saxophone (The Indigos)

TRACKLIST

1. Don't Look So Serious (5:02)
2. The Indigos (7:39)
3. Ode to All Night (6:48)
4. It's Cruel That It Ends (6:01)