Musicians Featured:

Quintet(Side A)

• Jay Bellerose - drums

• Dave Easley - pedal steel guitar

• Philip Glenn - violin

• Alex Sadnik - alto saxophone

• Anthony Shadduck - double bass

Quartet (Side B)

• Billy Mohler - bass

• Tina Raymond - drums

• Alex Sadnik - alto saxophone

• Kris Tiner - trumpet

Cover Artwork:

• Cover art and layout by David J. Woodruff

• Photography by Devin O’Brien

Liner Notes from Ana Gavrilovska:

Charlie Parker is a figure of permanent fascination, his inestimable contributions to jazz eternally reverberating across space and time. For Alex Sadnik, the choice to reimagine some of Parker’s most beloved standards arose from the desire for the structure of practice sessions without necessarily having a reason for them. On the heels of a global pandemic with no gigs for the foreseeable future, Sadnik found himself in jam sessions instead, reaching for “Ornithology” and realizing he’d forgotten how to play it. Given how important Parker was to Sadnik’s musical growth, both in jazz and as a saxophonist, this seemed like an auspicious opportunity to revisit the man’s music: what if he came out of this really just knowing all these songs again?

Sadnik plunged into the project of transcribing Parker’s solos, a formidable undertaking that unlocked compelling possibilities for him to compose his own arrangements. This is the body of work you now hear on Flight.

The album spreads its wings in two uniquely divergent forms. On side A, the more traditional grouping of Sadnik’s alto sax, Anthony Shadduck’s double bass, and Jay Bellerose’s drums is augmented with Philip Glenn on violin and Dave Easley on pedal steel guitar. This ensemble inflects Parker’s blues-based bebop with country and western motifs, lending a haunting quality to the music. On “Bird of Paradise,” Easley’s steel transforms the tune into something of a country ballad. “Parker’s Mood” is the track kept most intact by Sadnik, as he plays the melody largely verbatim and gives the piano intro to the violin. That lone violin is a meeting ground for country and baroque to mingle within the jazz, a nearly minimalist take on the orchestral expanse of Charlie Parker With Strings. “Donna Lee” is the most starkly changed, Sadnik revamping the 4-4 time signature into a waltz, necessitating a complete rewrite of the melody.

Side B takes the form of a chordless quartet à la Gerry Mulligan and Ornette Coleman, with Billy Mohler on bass, Tina Raymond on drums, and Kris Tiner on trumpet joining Sadnik’s alto. He found that the chordless approach – an idea posed by label head Chris Schlarb – lent itself well to his updated arrangements, drawing on the fact that there's plenty of space for there not to be a lot of harmonic activity. In the case of “Yardbird Suite,” a strong sense of swing propels the music in a way where guitar or piano could be easily incorporated. Not to do so creates something different, new. A frenetic quality is at the forefront of “Red Cross,” allowing the track to function as a showcase for Raymond. The interaction between the horns and her drum soloing renders chords quite unnecessary. On album closer “Diverse Segment,” the rhythm section of Raymond and Mohler lock in so well that the resulting groove gives Sadnik and Tiner ample space to play around.

The recordings for Flight took place during two sessions in March 2022, separated by two weeks. The ensembles were a mix of musicians Sadnik has known and played with for a long time and folks that Schlarb brought into the mix, some of whom Sadnik met for the first time at the sessions. The music flowed forth with ease, an organic exploration of his arrangements, seldom requiring multiple takes.

In this way, the album faithfully lives up to its name. A sideways reference to the man whose music inspired it all, nodding at the freedom of movement, the biological necessity for birds to travel, soaring through an expanse of sky, using their wings without thinking, simply doing the thing that their bodies have been built to do: drifting, floating, swooping, flying. Flight.