Racer Session #437 | Remy Morritt | August 26, 2018
Hey hey, Racers!
This Sunday, our friend Remy Morritt will release his new album, "The Ant," at the Racer Sessions. Born and raised in Seattle, Remy had the pleasure of being in and around the exciting jazz scene in the city, spending time learning, playing, and teaching in the community before enrolling full-time at the University of Washington where he recently received a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies with a drum set focus. Remy has since become an exciting drummer in the Seattle area, co-founding the alternative soul jazz group Flip Phone and joining the neo-funk power trio Biddadat, as well as leading The Ant.
This will be Remy's first presentation with us - he's always close by on Sundays, taking great care for the drums that come and go from The Trading Musician. We're excited to steal him away this time and check out these cool new tunes! Read below for some words from Remy and make sure to find yourself at The Racer Sessions this Sunday at 8pm.
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"The Ant is a new project of mine featuring my original compositions and arrangements. For this session, I’ll be premiering an album of the same name featuring that music. I’m delighted to have the opportunity to play selections from the album at Cafe Racer with an incredible band: Daniel Salka on keys, Andrew Lihudis on bass, Rex Gregory on tenor sax and effects, and Max Walker on guitar and effects.
Remy Morritt / Photo by Chloe Corriveau
The inspiration for this music came about during my time as an undergrad at the University of Washington, employing (and subsequently breaking from) the knowledge and ideas shown to me by my mentors, Ted Poor, Cuong Vu, and Greg Sinibaldi. I was influenced as well as my peers in the jazz and creative music communities heavily as a composer. However, I wrote a lot of the music to convey a lot of personal feelings I was having as an artist, irrespective of the things I was trying to work on musically as a student. It almost was a chaotic purging of ideas that ended up becoming an experimental, open, groovy, distorted, and electronic nightmare. I decided to give it the not-so-apt name "The Ant”. The music weighs chaos and order through its personal expression, clashing with itself in texture and arrangements.
The pieces are structured such that they act as standalone songs, but allow large amounts of interpretation by the performers. Thus, the chaos can be created in this music by the will of the performers as well as through the composition. Some tunes are structurally through-composed but allow for textural nuances, others are returning melodies explored in improvisation. All of the pieces utilize modern effects, textures, and sounds to break it away from the conventional jazz acoustic setting. Recording the album gave me the opportunity to act as composer and producer of this music, allowing for a lot of experimentation with the music, conveniently left open enough to create an unexpected outcome. Joining me on the record was Alex Oliverio and Levi Gillis, along with Andrew Lihudis and Daniel Salka (both of whom will be performing with me).
I look forward to playing this new record for the Racer community!"
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