Sunjump Records
John Esposito's Sunjump label has a current catalogue of eleven cds.
Currently Available are:
2006 - John Esposito - Down Blue Marlin Road
2006 - John Esposito - The Blue People
2008 - Second Sight - Flying With The Comet
2008 - Sangeeta - Earthship
2008 - John Esposito - Book Of Five Rings
2009 - Steve Geraci - Aliqae Song
2009 - Mitch Kessler - Erratica
2009 - Marx/Siegel/Esposito - Inyo
2010 - Jayna Nelson - Bloom Of Creation
2010 - John Esposito - Orisha
2011 - Mitch Kessler - Der Erlkönig
Upcoming releases of new music include an expanded multimedia version of his A Book Of Five Rings ensemble. He is preparing several archival projects for CD release including a Second Sight 1987 session titled Tiger Tracks, several Sangeeta Michael Berardi dates and some previously unreleased Arthur Rhames recordings. He is also engaged in producing a record date for film maker Burrill Crohn’s upcoming documentary on guitarist Sangeeta Michael Berardi’s life and works as a painter/poet/ musician.
Leap of Faith:
John Esposito’s Sunjump Records
by Peter Aaron and photographs by Fionn Reilly, March 31, 2011
Someone starting a record label in today’s economic wasteland would seem to be, to put it kindly, quixotic. The middleman-cutting, direct-marketing accessibility of the Internet has at last wrested distribution away from the majors, and theoretically put indies on the same level as those long-monopolizing big boys. But at the same time the system is decimating many of the same smaller, integrity-driven, DIY concerns it’s been touted as helping: The file-sharing genie long ago popped out of the bottle and opened the floodgates, and now every second millions of self-professed “music lovers” plunge a knife in the hearts of the artists they profess to admire by stealing their music, without so much as a thought, via quasi-legal torrent sites. Most of this thievery involves pop music; jazz is less of a target. But, then, jazz has had it way harder for way longer. Jazz record sales reached their commercial peak during the big band era, and since then the genre has barely been able to keep going through artistically pivotal but comparatively modestly selling cult labels (this even includes the vaunted Impulse! ECM, and Blue Note) and occasional money-losing vanity releases on the majors. (There was a record-industry joke a couple decades back that went like this: “Q: How do you make a million on a jazz record? A: You spend three million.”) So those with new labels have it rough enough, but anyone running a jazz label nowadays? Ouch. And one that specializes in regional jazz? Double ouch. Whoever would be behind such an enterprise could only be doing it for the love.
Love is clearly what drives John Esposito’s Sunjump Records, an effort the Germantown pianist and educator began in 1986 and reactivated 20 years later. And, despite the odds, since the relaunch the imprint’s managed to survive while doing an exceptional job of documenting not just Esposito’s music, but that of other heretofore overlooked, Upstate-linked musicians. Obviously a selfless man. To some extent.
“Well, I partially restarted Sunjump in 2006 for my own sense of moving forward creatively,” he admits. “I’d had a family and helped raise two kids. [Esposito was the companion of singer and voice teacher Pamela Pentony, who had two children from a previous partner.] The relationship ended and I began revisiting all of these early recordings I’d been involved in, as a way of rethinking my work and figuring out where to go next. I decided I wanted to release them, and one thing led to another.”
It’s tempting to say it was the Marlborough-raised Esposito’s genetic destiny to become a jazz musician: His grandfather, Salvatore Esposito, was a violinist, saxophonist, and violin maker who played with 1920s jazz king Paul Whiteman. “But I didn’t really find out about that until after he’d died, when I’d already been playing jazz for years,” the keyboardist maintains. “And my parents were more into classical and Broadway stuff.” It was the blues that bit him first—the Delta stylings of Robert Johnson, Bukka White, and Son House, followed by the postwar Chicago greats, and, eventually, the Butterfield Blues Band and Jimi Hendrix—and in his mid teens motivated him to pick up the harmonica and sit in with neighboring guitarist Steve Geraci’s garage band. Geraci taught him some basic piano progressions and introduced him to jazz via records by Django Reinhardt, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Charles Mingus. Next came studies in composition at SUNY Albany, after which he became the house pianist at the Gemini Jazz Cafe, where he worked with the Capital Region’s two saxophone legends, J. R. Monterose and Nick Brignola, and led his first band. In 1980 he made the leap south, becoming part of Manhattan’s inspired Downtown loft scene and meeting saxophonist, guitarist, and composer Arthur Rhames, with whom he performed for five years.
Rhames, who died in 1989 at age 32, never released any recordings during his lifetime but remains an enigmatic firebrand whose all-too-briefly-burning flame is recalled with reverent nods and headshaking disbelief by those lucky enough to have witnessed it. “Arthur’s energy and technique as a musician, his prolific level as a composer. You can’t even imagine it,” Esposito says. “If you believe that John Coltrane’s and Miles Davis’s 1960s work was the pinnacle of transcendence, well, he digested that, along with what Jimi Hendrix did, and took it all to the next level. It was frightening to watch Arthur go by and know that very few people had an awareness of him.” (To date there have only been two posthumously issued Rhames-led dates, on the Ayler and DIW labels; thankfully, Sunjump is readying more material for release.) Following Rhames’s passing, Esposito formed Second Sight, a quintet that also included two other eventual Hudson Valley players, bassist Allen Murphy and drummer Jeff “Siege” Siegel, as well as saxophonist Jeff Marx, and future trumpet star Dave Douglas. At the height of the retro-nostalgic “Young Lions” era the besuited band fit right in visually, but its music, which crossed that scene’s overt bop references with more modern free-jazz influences, often displeased patrons in search of a little Wynton Marsalis to go with their cocktails.
“At that time, if you wanted to work in New York clubs you bought a suit,” recalls Esposito. “But I never wanted to be part of the Young Lions movement. It was like some neoconservative hard bop mindset, where everybody just wished they could be Miles Davis in 1963. At the same time, though, [the band] didn’t fit into the Downtown scene, which was more about contemporary classical and avant-garde than African-American-based music. So we were kind of in between.” Still, Second Sight won the plaudits of critics and even iconic pianist Horace Silver, who sometimes “borrowed” the band from Esposito—with the starstruck junior musician’s approval, of course—for gigs. Flying With the Comet
While the Hudson Valley has a long and deeply embedded jazz community, there’ve been surprisingly few labels to reflect this. Other than Sunjump, Catskill’s Planet Arts and Kingston’s Reservoir Music come to mind, although neither of them have been as locally focused. With his operation, Esposito is fully involved in every step of the process, from gathering the musicians and booking studio time to writing liner notes, from choosing the eye-engaging original art that adorns the CD covers to handling promotion and distribution, and producing and playing on the sessions. He began the label’s resurrection with two 2003 recordings, his trio’s Down Blue Marlin Road
Now living in California, Berardi was a vital contributor to the Manhattan loft scene before immigrating in 1968 to Woodstock, where he performed at the fabled Sound Out festivals and started the Group 212 collective, which introduced free jazz to the region and paved the way for the later Creative Music Studio. Stricken with Parkinson’s disease a few years ago, the indomitable Berardi nevertheless continues to play, readapting his technique to compensate for his affliction. The musician/poet/painter is also the subject of Playing with Parkinson’s, a documentary being produced by area filmmaker Burrill Crohn. “Sangeeta’s such an amazing artist, such a unique and inspiring individual—like John, I knew I just had to help tell his story,” says Crohn, adding that filming is set to culminate with a recording session led by Berardi at NRS Studio in Catskill this summer. “Most other musicians would just give up if they were in [Berardi’s] shoes. But to him [playing has] gone from being largely about virtuosity to being more about, as he calls it, ‘the vibrations.’ It’s about going deeper.” (Clips of the film can be seen at www.playingwithparkinsons.com.)
Sunjump has also begun nurturing rising talent in the form of two discs by saxophonist Mitch Kessler: his 2009 debut, Erratica
The remaining titles in the Sunjump catalog thus far include Inyo, a tense and spidery 2009 offering by Esposito and his erstwhile Second Sight bandmates Marx and Siegel, and last year’s Orisha, another sparkling set by the pianist’s regular trio; Second Sight’s unissued 1987 follow-up, Tiger Tracks, is set to emerge this year. “With Sunjump I haven’t been making money, but as long as I don’t lose any it’s fine,” says Esposito, who also gigs with Latin ensemble Mambo Kikongo. “It’s true that the old model of the record industry is collapsing, but for working musicians CDs still make sense. Not just as a way to preserve their music, but to have something to sell at shows. I’m just trying to keep creating situations where I get to work with other people. I feel like if I didn’t do that it wouldn’t happen. And the label is a really good way to do it. You do what you can.”
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Sunjump: Archaeology of the Present
Sunjump Records - Published: September 20, 2009
By Jakob Baekgaard
In a time when the music business, as many other other branches of commerce, is in crisis, it has become increasingly relevant to ask what needs to be done in order to save record labels. While the major companies retreat to protective copyright thinking and unimaginative repacking of archive material, a new host of independent labels is embracing the possibilities of the new digital area, seeing it as blessing rather than a curse. What drives these independent labels is the love of the music itself. Rather than thinking in cash and commerce terms, what counts to them is to have good music out there, no matter how difficult it may be to sell it, believing that great art eventually will find its way to those who seek it.
Pianist John Esposito's Sunjump label is an example of such an independent label. It has done a lot to promote that area of jazz music which lies outside the narrow definitions of commercial genres and target groups. It is the ability to take chances when no one else dares that has been the hallmark of Sunjump, and that was also the case back in the mid-1980s when Esposito had just recorded with his group Second Sight and was in search of label willing to put the music out.
"I formed Sunjump in 1986," says Esposito. "Second Sight had been together for a year. We did a short demo that no one was interested in and that we didn't really know what to do with. I felt we should go ahead and produce our own record date and try to sell the master to an established label or press it ourselves. We were in NYC and there were so many scam artists and disinterested or dishonest labels that I decided to try to release the album Flying With The Comet (Sunjump 1986/2007) on my own label and at least be in control of getting it out to radio and press. That turned out to be a good idea. I found a partner, Elliot Lloyd, who was very good at promotion. We got lots of airplay and press and worked in New York City and the northeast part of the USA quite a bit.
"We recorded a second CD, Tiger Tracks, the following year, 1987, but we didn't have the money to put it out. We also expanded a bit and released Jose Chalas' Living On Avenue F and Marc Wagnons Shadowlines. I ran out of money to produce projects, having a family with two kids to feed, so the label died. My business partner Lloyd went on to manage Matt Ship for a while, while working for a small label in NYC and died of lymphoma a few years later. Second Sight folded in 1990. Our last gigs were in Woodstock for the FM Artists Coalition. Everyone went on to do their own projects. I worked a lot as a sideman with [drummer] Franklin Kiermyer, [saxophonist] Eric Person and lots of other people. In 2003, with no family obligations, I decided to get back to concentrating on playing my own music and to reviving Sunjump."
John Esposito
Down Blue Marlin Road
Sunjump
2006
The first release on the resurrected Sunjump label was a recording of Esposito's trio with bassist Ira Coleman and drummer Peter O'Brien, thereby setting the pattern of future releases with Esposito involved either as leader or sideman. As he says: "The CDs I release on Sunjump are projects that I have been involved in that I find interesting and it is music that I want to hear. Sometimes I've played music that I don't care about and immediately forget, but there is also music that I play with people not only for the pleasure of making it but because I want to be able to listen to it myself."
Down Blue Marlin Road is a particularly strong re-imagination of the standard repertoire of the piano trio. Old staples like "Body and Soul," "Autumn Leaves" and "I'll Remember April" are turned inside-out; not only musically but also in the titles where they're cut down to "Soul," "Autumn" and "April." The same level of condensation takes place in the musical syntax, but there's nothing elliptic about the music. If anything, Esposito's re-workings are expansions of the music, which breaks down the accustomed way of listening to the familiar structures of the standard, changing rhythms and harmony into an expression where tradition is both referenced and transgressed.
Sangeeta Michael Berardi
Earthship
Sunjump
2008
Tradition is also an important aspect of guitarist Sangeeta Michael Berardis' Earthship (Sunjump 2008), but is not so much the heritage of the standards as the legacy of saxophonist John Coltrane that looms largely over the album. Besides Esposito, Sangeeta is joined by tenor saxophonist James Finn, bassist Hilliard Greene and drummer Peter O'Brien. From the epic opener, "Earthship," with a spellbinding melodic piano figure, to the inventive cover of the Coltrane-patented standard, "My Favorite Things," they create a deeply spiritual music, encompassing quiet mediations and wild explosions. Sangeeta's tone combines elements of aggressiveness and tranquility, occasionally fat and mellow, other times distorted and razor sharp.
The music carries many influences—from Indian ragas to fusion, free jazz and art rock—but at the heart of it all is the ambition of creating sounds that match the vibrations of the universe. As the enclosed poem written by Sangeeta says: "The universe is an Ocean of Infinite Vibrations / Our ears & brains translate certain vibrations into audible sound / Other frequencies pass through us unheard." That's what the album is all about: opening up the frequencies that were hitherto unheard.
John Esposito
A Book of Five Rings
Sunjump
2008
Sangeeta Michael Barardis Earthship was originally recorded in 1996 and it's characteristic of Sunjump that it works in the area of archival recordings and also with contemporary releases. When it comes to preparing the lost sessions different strategies are applied. It all depends on whether the recordings are from the 1980s or 1990s.
Esposito explains: "The projects recorded in the '80s were done in the studio on multi-track analog tape. They have been baked at low temperature to restore their playability and then transferred to digital hard drive. The studio recordings are then remixed by Scott Petito at NRS Studio in Catskill, NY. He's brilliant at the whole studio process from recording to mixing, editing and mastering. There are often problems like finding Dolby machines for the transfers, but we have been able to work it out.
"Some of the '80s recordings were made on poor quality cassette machines. Editing and digital cleaning are necessary. And those projects are not multi-tracked and cannot be remixed. We do whatever is possible with EQ, editing and cleaning. The '90s recordings are a mixed bag of multi-track analog, digital and DAT. The Knitting Factory concerts—my A Book Of Five Rings and Jayna Nelson's upcoming Bloom Of Creation—were done on DAT. So on those we edited, either for time considerations or digital tape damage, and cleaned to remove noise."
A Book of Five Rings is a fine illustration of how it is possible to achieve a warm, crisp sound with archival releases. The album documents a live concert where Esposito is working with a large ensemble and the energy shines through. "Bwarat" is fiery tribal dance reminiscent of Pierre Dorge's New Jungle Orchestra while "Coltrane's Church" is Esposito's beautiful homage to the saxophonist. All the musical voices work together in a perfect setting—with especially the talented saxophonist Eric Person, who is also heard on The Blue People (Sunjump, 2006), doing some forceful blowing. There's not an inch of dust on this recording. The music is as fresh as it possibly can be.
Steve Geraci
Aliqae Song
Sunjump
2009
This is also the case with the recording from Steve Geraci, another guitarist on Sunjump. Aliqae Song was recorded back in 1980 but never saw the light of day until Esposito decided to put it out in 2009. Compared to Sangeeta Michael Berardi, Steve Geraci is a very different stylist with a much lighter tone, which combines elements of swing, Eastern music and rock. On Aliqae Song the collaboration with vocalist Kit Potter is especially fascinating, as is evident on the title track with the vocal and guitar lines coalescing. Another highlight is the gently propulsive "The New Soft Shoe," where drummer Rashied Ali is a guest.
It is hard to tell that the music was recorded in the 1980s. It has a timeless quality about it that stands above the somewhat conservative area in which it was created. Speaking of the musical environment back in that decade, Esposito says: "I was living in New York in the '80s and competing with musicians who had a very conservative and therefore commercial view of music. The Young Lions aesthetic is as commercial as the Smooth Jazz aesthetic. One audience is not more enlightened than the other and both camps of musicians are equally serious about their point of view from both the aspects of art and commerce. I tend to not think of art and commerce as being very connected, so I am a very bad businessperson.
"I am only interested in listening to and making music that wakes up my ears and heart and that kind of music is always around hiding in the shadows whether talking about the '80s or now. There is a tendency in this country towards boring jazz music but that is a function of people learning to play in school. The American educational system creates very good low-wage workers for corporations, but is designed to crush creativity and individuality with rules, tests and pharmaceuticals. Fewer and fewer Americans know how to question authority and the status quo and few are able to look at the world through innocent eyes.
"So what kind of improviser does that worldview create? It's important to know and love tradition and be willing to change it or ignore it. The old system of learning to play in clubs, self-education, the street and mystery had its advantages however difficult it was."
Mitch Kessler
Erratica
Sunjump
2009
While it may be true that progressive music will always be lurking in the shadows, Esposito's label gives evidence that it doesn't necessarily have to be so. Sunjump shows that it possible to revisit and rewrite the past and dig up forgotten treasures, but it is just as much concerned with contemporary music. One of the latest releases is Erratica a record from saxophonist Mitch Kessler who is joined by Esposito's own trio. Together they play all new material by the leader whose dry, swinging sound is both abstract and melodically inventive.
There's also a great deal of humour involved with titles like "The Sixth Marx Brother," "Deconstructing Post" and "Goblins in Love," but that doesn't mean that the music is light-hearted, on the contrary it comes across tightly knit and yet open to improvisational surprises. This is due, in no small part, to Esposito's trio who are the perfect partners to Kessler. They share the same understanding of fluid form and the blending of modern abstraction and straight-ahead swing. Bassist Ira Coleman's warm, woody tone is joy to behold, as is Esposito's encyclopaedic mastery of the piano, and drummer Peter O'Brien keeps it all together with his infectious rhythms and free form abstractions.
When asked about the future plans of the label, Esposito reveals: "The next release will be flutist Jayna Nelson's "Bloom Of Creation," a 1999 Knitting Factory concert with trumpeter Matt Schulman, me on piano, bassist Francois Moutin and drummer Pete O'Brien. The music was completely improvised. It was the first and only time that group played together and it had the kind of magic that jazz should have. I will do another trio recording with Ira Coleman and Pete O'Brien, busy schedules permitting, in October. It will be of my compositions.
"Another new project I am hoping to record this year, would be a DVD of a group I put together and performed with this past spring with violinist Rosi Hertlein, flutist Jayna Nelson, trumpeter Greg Glassman, saxophonist Stacy Dillard, bassists Hill Greene and Emma Alabaster, drummer Peter O'Brien, video artist Laura Steele and me on piano, electric keyboard loops and drums. The next two archival projects are Second Sight's Tiger Tracks 1987, previously unreleased, and the rest of the material from Sangeeta Michael Berardi's Earthship date Calling Coltrane."
Thus, there is no sign of crisis when speaking about the future. In fact, Esposito is very positive about the development of the music industry: "At this point in time it makes sense to produce your own recordings and release them internationally on the net. The chain stores are gone. Young people download and file share, which means that CDs are no longer a business. You can't sell a product you don't control access to. You do get the music out to people all over the world who would have not been able to find it in the days of record company control of the means of distribution and promotion. The people who support this music the most are often fans who love it enough to write about it, radio dj the music and produce concerts. They are usually people who don't see art as a business but as an act of love. I feel the same way. Music is a great source of spiritual enrichment and makes life worth living. It's not a business and neither is Sunjump Records. I expect to spend money on it. I don't expect to make much back."
So far Sunjump has succeeded on its own terms, which is about artistic value and not about finance and the value of a product. In that sense, Sunjump is not alone but part of a new movement in American music. Says Esposito: "Sunjump is just part of a larger phenomenon that is happening: individual musicians are producing music projects on a level equal to or superior to the projects that large record companies used to produce. The large companies are folding or hanging on by producing predictable mass-market music or occasionally stumbling onto a creative project that also makes them some money. It's easier now for individual, independent musicians to record an ongoing, changing body of work and get it to the specific people who want to hear it no matter where they are in the world."
Seen from this point, there isn't a crisis in music, but rather in the corporations that sell music as a predefined product. The dissemination of music is, in fact, a freedom that lies very close to the nature of jazz, which was never about restrictions. This is also true when thinking about the conception of history. Regarding this problem Esposito makes a point: "I have no way of judging the importance of events in my own lifetime. In my lifetime I've watched Bela Bartok's importance in the Conservatory world change from an avant-garde madman, to a minor ethnic composer, to perhaps the greatest composer of the 20th century, to a non-person."
While the tides of history indeed may be changing, Sunjump itself is a proof of how previously neglected musicians are gaining providence thanks to the label's effort. But it's a resurrection not for the sake of history itself, but for the relevance of today. Whether releasing music that ties the knot between the past and present or bringing out historical music ahead of its time, Sunjump's musical profile is located in the here and now. It is a musical archaeology of the present.
Tracks and Personnel
Down Blue Marlin Road
Tracks: Beloved; It Was Just...; Soul; Autumn; April; ...9...; Red; Ocean; Down Blue Marlin Road; ...Of Those Things; Ganges.
Personnel: John Esposito: piano; Ira Coleman: bass; Peter O'Brien: drums.
Earthship
Track listing: Earthship; Sahara Song; Coltrane's Love Lights Our Way; Six for Rashied; Eleutheria; Trane's Church; Evening, Woodstock; Onedaruth; My Favorite Things.
Personnel: Sangeeta Michael Berardi: guitar, pedals; John Espoito: piano, drums (3, 6, 8); James Finn: tenor sax, flute, bass clarinet, bells; Hilliard Greene: bass; Peter O'Brien: drums.
A Book of Five Rings
Tracks: Bwarat; Smitty; Two Worlds; You Get What You Want; And His Spirit Ascended/Trane's Church.
Personnel: John Esposito: piano; Jayna Nelson: flute; Matt Schulman: trumpet; Eric Person: soprano & alto saxophone; James Finn: bass clarinet & tenor saxophone; Tony Underwood: tuba; Hilliard Greene: bass; Peter O'Brien: drums.
Aliqae Song
Tracks: Aliqae Song; Main St. Stroll; Those Precious Years; The New Soft Shoe; Rendezvous.
Personnel: Steve Geraci: guitar; Kit Potter: vocals; Arthur Rhames: alto saxophone; John Stubblefield: flute, soprano & tenor saxophone; John Esposito: piano; Charlie Knicely: bass; Jeff Siegel: drums; Rashied Ali: drums (track 4); Frederick Berryhill: percussion.
Erratica
Tracks: The Sixth Marx Brother; Deconstructing Post; Modernist Dilletantism; Erratica; Panic; The Ugliest Beauty; Bibi Andersson; Brain Freeze; Goblins In Love.
Personnel: Mitch Kessler: saxophone; John Esposito: piano; Ira Coleman: bass; Peter O'Brien: drums.