David Sanford and the Pittsburgh Collective: Live at the Knitting Factory, featuring cellist Matt Haimovitz.
In Oxingale’s tenth release, composer David Sanford leads the Pittsburgh Collective big band – five saxophones, five trumpets, five trombones, piano, electric guitar, bass, drums, and congas – in his debut full-length album. The CD comprises world premiere recordings, works composed while Sanford was in residence at the American Academy in Rome, Italy, as winner of the prestigious Rome Prize. Cellist Matt Haimovitz joins the Collective in Sanfords new cello concerto, Scherzo Grosso, which is the latest installment in Haimovitzs Buck the Concerto series of commissions for cello with unusual pairings, as well as a new version of Sanford’s Seventh Avenue Kaddish.

With David Sanford as bandleader and creative magnet, an eclectic mix of jazz, classical, Latin and jam-based musicians from across the U.S. and Japan come together in the Pittsburgh Collective. Recorded live on May 29, 2005, on the main stage of NYCs Knitting Factory, the new album captures the kinetic energy and musical ingenuity of some of todays jazz and classical heavyweights, including trumpeters Dave Ballou, Brian McWhorter, and Hiro Noguchi, pianist Geoffrey Burleson, saxophonists Adam Kolker, Ted Levine, and Jon Nelson, trombonists Mike Christianson and Benjamin Herrington, and David Fabris on electric guitar. Add Haimovitzs blazing cello and the result is a jazz-funk-bebop-contemp-classical caffeine substitute from one of the hottest big bands since Mingus and Mahavishnu.

David’s music moves the listener through emotion, humor, intense rhythms and sheer power. Todays audiences of wide-ranging musical backgrounds will recognize influences theyve grown up with in Davids music, elevated and organized by one of classical musics most thoughtful and insightful minds. Matt Haimovitz

Those familiar with Matt Haimovitz’s work wont be surprised to hear him backed by drums, playing unison lines with the saxophone section, or playing in duet with electric guitar. Although the majority of the piece is fully notated, there are portions of the fourth movement left open for improvisation for cello and the rhythm section.