Trio Antipodes - Upside Downwards (2019)

Is a highly expressive, improvisational trio of guitar, piano and drums. It features Graydon Cramer on drums, Jeff Presslaff on piano and Keith Price on guitar. The name refers literally and metaphorically to its wide reach — from Manitoba to Auckland, and from detailed composition to freewheeling blowing.

After years of playing together in different settings and configurations, Cramer, Presslaff, and Price decided to further explore their shared sensibilities and musical tastes in the form of a bass-less trio. The experiment showed tremendous potential from the outset and allowed each to explore melody, harmony, range, and functional roles in new and exciting ways. This project presents the three artists in a format of constantly morphing arrangements and improvisation that is both free and structured and also serves as a vehicle for their own unique compositional voices. Each piece, and the album as a whole, aims to tell a story with beautiful arcs of energy and interaction that engage and captivate throughout.

Keith Price is a guitarist and composer who learned his first chords from his Grandfather on a dark-red hollow-bodied guitar. At age fifteen, the rawness and intensity of John Coltrane’s expression drew him into the world of jazz. He now has a graduate degree in music performance from Brandon University, and teaches jazz studies at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Keith’s brilliant fusions of jazz, grunge and other popular musics are well-known nationally and internationally .

Pianist, Jeff Presslaff, is fast closing in on his 50th year of professional music. Born in NY City, he caught the tail end of the great mid-20th century jazz flourishing, hearing such luminaries as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Chet Baker, Roy Eldridge and Benny Goodman at a very young age. He has since gotten to play with many of his childhood idols, including Benny Carter, Frank Foster and Curtis Fuller. Jeff is considered one of Canada’s premier jazz composers, and is well-known to Canadian audiences through his writing and playing for The Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra, The Saskatoon Jazz Orchestra, Papa Mambo, The Complete Rebirth of the Cool and his various small groups.

This album is Graydon Cramer’s first, and will bring him the wider exposure his playing deserves. He is a highly sought after drummer and music educator based in Brandon, Manitoba, who has a B. Mus/B. Ed from Brandon University, and is a founding member of the Winnipeg Jazz Collective. He has toured across Western Canada with the likes of Michael Cain, Chameleon, Anagram, Dean McNeil, The Saskatoon and Winnipeg Jazz Orchestras, and the NuPhunk Orchestra. Graydon is a long-standing faculty member at the International Music Camp and maintains a private teaching studio in addition to performing.

Tracklist:

01. 6 Chords, Commentary
02. The Halfway Three
03. Tearsilver
04. Urgency, Not Immediacy
05. Living with Loss
06. When the Wild Man Makes an Appearance
07. Max Headroom