THE SWAY MACHINERY: History
The Sway Machinery
For those who have seen The Sway Machinery in action, little explanation is needed. The band's combination of rhythmic power and potent folklore takes no prisoners. On stage the energy of submerged worlds is torn out into the light of day. And indeed, the historical tradition of Cantorial music, which is the focus of the band's work, is very much a lost world. The music of The Sway Machinery invites the listener to become like children wandering in the forest, discovering something mythic and wonderful.
The band boasts an unusually accomplished line-up of musicians, featuring guitarist Jeremiah Lockwood of Balkan Beat Box, drummer Brian Chase of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, bass saxophonist Colin Stetson of Arcade Fire and Tom Waits' band, and the trumpet and tenor sax horn section of the band Antibalas, Jordan McLean and Stuart Bogie. The powerful combination of musical personalities yields an unassailable force of excitement.
The Sway Machinery began its work in 2006, a product of a long collaboration between Jeremiah Lockwood and Israeli percussionist Tomer Tzur, joined by a battery of heavy hitting horn players. In 2007, Tomer moved back to Israel, and the band was joined by Brian Chase, one of the best known and loved drummers in the underground rock music scene.
In September 2007, the band premiered Hidden Melodies Revealed, a secret celebration of Rosh HaShana (the Jewish new year) at Angel Orensanz Foundation. This multi-media concert celebrated the power of the Cantorial music tradition in an event that blurred the line between rock show and ritual. A second installation of this concert/event was performed at Le Poisson Rouge in 2008, and 2009 will find the band bringing this unique concept to Los Angeles and San Francisco!
The band's debut full-length album, also entitled HIDDEN MELODIES REVEALED, has been released on JDub Records. The album was recorded at Le Petite Eglise, Aracade Fire's private studio housed in an old church near Montreal, and finds the band striving for ever new heights of musical delving. The album delivers the goods and drives the glory down.
Hidden Melodies Revealed - Jeremiah says about the music...
When I was a boy my grandfather and I used to sit in his study listening to records of the great Cantors: Zawel Kwartin, Pierre Pinchik, Berele Chagy and other masters of Jewish music. In the dimly lit room, fragrant with pipe smoke and lined with huge volumes of the Talmud, their names resonated with a rich feeling of mythology and ancientness. On the wall was hung a framed print of a 16th century French map. In each corner of the map stood an image of one of the four races of the world, as was understood by the cartographers of the time. The images fortified the feeling that in that room the past and present and all of human kind were united in the study of some ancient wisdom. It felt to me as a child that there, in the dusky back room of my Granparents’ apartment in Queens, a passageway was opened into the heart of the world.
The music of the great Cantors is an astounding synthesis of personal creative innovation and total subservience to traditional art forms. In the work of the master Chazzans can be heard a knowledge of the modes and gestures of ancient synagogue art and the communication of an individual soul rooted in its particular time and place. One hears in the voice of the Cantor a deeply assured spokesman for the community telling a story that is both of the moment and beyond the ability of history to contain.
The Sway Machinery is currently at work on a project that seeks to reclaim the deep roots of Ashkenazic Jewish spiritual music. It is my belief that in the work of the master Chazzans of the Golden Age of Cantorial music there is a model for creative work that can be usefully employed today. In the Cantor’s balance of artistic authority and spiritual humility I see a perfect stance from which to speak to the emotional needs of the contemporary world. Together with my colleagues, I am revisiting the work of my heroes of Chazzanus, particularly the music of my grandfather, the legendary Cantor Jacob Konigsberg. In this way I am hoping to return to that place of childlike awe that he opened to me and share it with the world.
Jeremiah Lockwood - guitar-voice-composition-storytelling
Son of composer Larry Lockwood and the grandson of the legendary Cantor Jacob Konigsberg, Jeremiah Lockwood began his musical career playing on the streets of Manhattan. He soon struck up a relationship with Piedmont Blues master Carolina Slim, with whom he still performs. Jeremiah and Carolina Slim have appeared together in Avery Fisher Hall, the New School Blues Festival, and have been profiled in The New York Times Magazine and TimeOut NY. Jeremiah has worked for years as the front man for The Sway Machinery, a blues/world beat/Chazzanus ensemble that is currently revamping its sound and taking New York by storm with the help of friends from the Antibalas horn section. Recently, Jeremiah has been working as a composer for film and theater, scoring the Adam Vardi film Mendy, and a documentary piece on Israeli artist Miriam Cabessa that was featured as an installation at the Tel Aviv Modern Art Museum. In the past years, Jeremiah has also been appearing with J-Dub recording artists Balkan Beat Box. Jeremiah’s blues-oriented solo album, American Primitive, was released by Vee-Ron Records/Red Eye Distribution in April 2006. Jeremiah Lockwood lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife Shasta and their son Moses Lion.
Stuart Bogie - tenor saxophone
Performed With:
Volney Litmus, Antibalas, The FunkeyMonkeys, TV on the Radio, Madeski, Martin and Wood, Burning Spear, Sinehead O'Conner, The Wu-Tang Clan, Rana, Dub is a Weapon, Congo Ashanti Roy, Tony Allen, Kologbo, Tunde WIlliams, The Sway Machinery, Jeremiah Lockwood, Paul Cox, Renata, Transmission, Colin Stetson, Matt Bauder, Matthew Lux, Toby Summerfield, Crush, Kill, Destroy, Fire of Space, The Eternal Buzz Brass Band, Geoff Mann, Recloose, Evan Hause, Reverend Vince Anderson, Chin Chin, The Sharp Things, The El Michels Affair, Sharon Jones and the Dapkings, The Fu Arkist-Ra, Dick Griffin (of Sun Ra's Arkistra), Vincent Chancey, Steve Swell, Joe McGinty, Tom Abs, Shoko Nagai, Jeremy Welms, Larry MacDonald, Brian Jackson, Butch Morris, Bill Brovold and Larval, Caural, Victor Rice, Gomez, Dragons of Zynth, Baaba Maal
Recorded with:
Volney Litmus, Antibalas, The FunkeyMonkeys, , TV on the Radio, Madeski, Martin and Wood, Josh Sitron (composer of "Dora the Explorer)", Massive Attack, Chin Chin, Daptone Records, Sharon Jones and the Dapkings, Various Soul Fire/Truth and Soul tracks, DJ Logic, Chris Lee, The Eternal Buzz Brass Band, Geoff Mann, Recloose, Evan Hause, Dub is a Weapon, Congo Ashanti Roy, Fire of Space, Toby Summerfield, The Sway Machinery, Jeremiah Lockwood,The Dragons of Zynth, Dave Sitek, Celebration (Formerly LoveLife), The Fu Arkist-Ra, Paul Cox, Renata, Jeremy Welms, Dennis Ferrer, Butch Morris, Dr. Evan Hause, Bill Brovold and Larval, Caural, Tiklah, Victor Rice
Composed/Arranged/Produced for:
Transmission, Antibalas, People's Bizarre, Renata, Paul Cox, Jeremiah Lockwood, Volney Litmus, The FunkeyMonkeys, Dennis Ferrer, Original Ultra Violets (w/Caurel), Fire of Space, Dave Sitek
Brian Chase - drums
Brian Chase is perhaps best known as the drummer with the New York rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Chase grew up in Long Island and attended Friends Academy in Locust Valley, and Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Oberlin, Ohio. Now living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he also plays for the rock band The Seconds. Chase has always been an adventurous player and has sat in with many other groups, including Oakley Hall and Blarvuster. He has also performed in a number of experimental duos with other musicians such as Stefan Tcherepnin and Seth Misterka. Other musicians he has played with recently are Jessica Pavone, Mary Halvorson, Matt Elliot, and klezmer-fusion band The Sway Machinery.
Colin Stetson - bass saxophone
Woodwind player Colin Stetson can play powerfully while circularly breathing for long periods, can draw multiphonics out of a sax with great skill, and can command an audience's attention with his focus and melodic improvisations. Stetson was born and raised in Ann Arbor, MI, where he became proficient on assorted saxophones, clarinet, and flute. He earned a degree in music from his hometown school the University of Michigan in 1997, studying with Roscoe Mitchell, Donald Sinta, and Christopher Creviston; afterward, he went on to study with Steve Adams and Henry Threadgill as well. While still in college, he co-founded Transmission (which later became Transmission Trio), and in 1998 he played with progressive Detroit-area jazz-rockers Larval on their Knitting Factory album Larval 2. He moved to the San Francisco Bay Area that summer along with the rest of Transmission, which released its first album in 1999. Stetson also branched out to play live with the likes of Fred Frith, Peter Kowald, Ned Rothenberg, and Kenny Wollesen, and kept up his Detroit/Ann Arbor connections as well. Before moving west, he had played on his friend Recloose's debut EP for Planet E, and their collaborations continued over the years, culminating in the DJ's acclaimed full-length Cardiology in 2002. Also that year, Tom Waits tapped Stetson for reed work on his Alice and Blood Money albums, which led to significant exposure and a live performance on David Letterman. His most recent appearance with Waits has been on the soundtrack to the animated feature Shrek 2. Stetson had a limited edition 3" CD release of a 2002 performance at the Artship in Oakland, and his full-length debut as a leader came in the summer of 2003 with the quintet recording Slow Descent. Since relocating to NYC in 2004, Stetson is performing regularly with the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, Jeremiah Lockwood's Sway Machinery, Zemog El Gallo Bueno, and the ever present Transmission as well as performances with Sinead O'Connor, Burning Spear and Medeski, Martin, and Wood and Anthony Braxton. In 2007 Stetson was hired by indie-rock mavens Arcade Fire to play an arsenal of woodwinds and brass instruments (with a focus on French Horn) on their world tour. www.colinstetson.com For more information.
-Steve Huey, All Music Guide (allmusic.com)
Jordan McLean - trumpet
Charter member, lead trumpet, featured soloist and contributing composer, Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra; founding memeber, Fire of Space, Piano Music and Song Trio, and Droid; featured solo and ensemble work with Medeski Martin and Wood, Cyro Baptista, Butch Morris, Daniel Carter, Roy Campbell jr., Shoko Nagai, Jeremia Lockwood, Volney Litmus, Chin Chin, Eternal Buzz Brass Band, Akim's Dhafusion, Pransemble, Velour Music, and countless other NYC based and international musical personalities.
The past three years have seen Jordan completing a BMA in orchestral composition at SUNY Purchase, under the guidance of 21st Century American/Cosmic music luminaries Dary John Mizelle and Joel Thome.
Jordan has most recently completed a studio recording of concert works including pieces for solo piano, percussion quartet and Seeking Celestial Frequencies for string quartet. Fire of Space will be releasing it's first album, Handbasket, this summer on 482 music.
PAX CULTURA
Tomer Tzur - drums and percussion
Tomer’s up bringing in Israel has been the essential ingredient in shaping his musical style. Tomer moved to Manhattan to study composition and performance. He received his BFA from the New School. The vibrant music scene in New York exposed Tomer to Brazilian and Afro-Cuban music, which he played with Beat the Donkey led by the premier Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista. Tomer adapted his native Mid Eastern percussion, the darbukah and tof-miriam (tambourine) to his new musical landscape. Tomer has recorded with Artists such as Pharaoh’s Daughter, Amos Hoffman, Anistar orchestra, Avishai Cohen (Bassist), Shira Kline, StorahTelling, and has worked extensively with the Moroccan Jewish and Syrian Jewish community of musicians. He is a performer in residence at Congregation B'nai Jeshurun. Tomer has composed music for animated film and theatre, and gives workshops on Mid-Eastern percussion.
Selected performances: Central Park's Summer Stage, the Stockholm Jewish theater, Carre in Amsterdam. Hasidic Blues directed by BBC veteran filmmaker Robert Mullan. Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park, Smithsonian FolkLife Festival and Kennedy Center Washington D.C.
In 2007, Tomer moved back to his native Israel, currently residing in Jaffa, and is bringing his years of experience in NYC back to the Old World. He remains associated with The Sway Machinery, returning for the Hidden Melodies Revealed concert/event last September, and for recording sessions.