ScottThorntonMusic.com

THORNTON BROTHERS record new jazz CD
It's been a long time coming! More than six years after Child's Play was recorded, Bruce & I got together with Jim Ridl on piano and Eric Halvorson on drums to knock out an entire all original CD in one day at Peter Karl Studios in Brooklyn. We had a great time and we have a beautiful product to show for our effort.

Scott, Bruce, Jim, Eric

Ironically, Jim (JimRidl.com) grew up in our home town of Dickinson, North Dakota, though I actually just met him a few years ago at Birdland after hearing his duo with Pat Martino as part of the JVC Jazz Festival. He performs and records with his own group and also plays regularly with Dave Liebman and many others. Eric (EricHalvorson.com) has been one of my closest friends for over twenty years. We met and first played together at the University of Iowa. Eric is in heavy demand and keeps very busy in the NYC music scene.

The CD consists of eight original tunes, five of Bruce's and three of my own. It was released in the Fall of 2006. The session went so smoothly thanks to Jim and Eric putting in the work and doing everything that was asked of them musically and so much more. We had one rehearsal the day before the recording. That was the first time we had played together as a complete quartet, although I had played with each member many times. We are very happy with the overall sound that was achieved and are grateful to engineer Jonathon Townes and the wonderful atmosphere at Peter Karl Studios.

YUCCA FLATS release Garden of Weeds
Yucca Flats recently released our latest CD Garden of Weeds through Mapleshade Records/Wildchild! Records. The release party, held at our home base "Underground Lounge" on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, was a great success as many of our loyal supporters packed the place to the gill. Even Mapleshade Records guru Pierre Sprey drove from Maryland to celebrate the occasion with us.

The CD, which is officially on the Wildchild! Records label has an amazing sound quality thanks to Pierre's specially designed equipment and studio, as well as masterful engineering at Mapleshade. Here are some specifics of the recording procedure: Minimum miking and minimum length cabling. No mixing board. No filtering. No compression. No equalization. No noise reduction. No multitracking. No overdubbing. Mastered live to two-track analog tape at 15ips, 18-42,000 hz (+/- 3db). Digitized on the Mapleshade custom A/D converter at 2823k samples per second.

The CD has very succesfully captured a clean intimate sound with all the energy of our live performances. If you close your eyes while listening to it, you'll think we're right in front of you. It's a breath of fresh air compared with generally over produced and glossed over music being assembled in most large studios.

Thornton Jazz Quartet featuring renowned drummer Dave Mancini
The "Quartet" of brothers Bruce (clarinet, bass clarinet, alto sax), Dann (piano), and I, along with Dave Mancini got back together for concert at the Sartell, Minnesota Jazz Festival. It had been over 10 years since we'd all performed together. I must say: "We sounded marvelous".