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Dan Pitt Trio: Stages
Dan Pitt Music

You'll find Stages in the jazz bin, but anyone looking for traditional swing or bebop covers won't hear it on Dan Pitt's second trio release and fourth overall. What you will find is adventurous writing and vigoruous interplay between the Toronto-based guitarist and his colleagues, double bassist Alex Fournier and drummer Nick Fraser. The jazz factor arises less in the styles of music featured on the forty-five-minute release and more in the facility each participant brings to the project. Even when a given track is through-composed or chamber folk-oriented, the trio broaches it with a sensibility grounded in advanced musicianship and comfort level with free play.

Restricting the presentation to three musicians proves effective for giving each ample space and allowing all to be heard with optimal clarity. Lovers of instrumental electric guitar will also find much to appreciate when Pitt strikes a satisfying balance between improvisation and composition. Solos are included but are direct and delivered with concision. Pitt also isn't afraid to get loud, as shown by the rugged episode that concludes “Foreboding.” It ain't Metallica, but a metal fan would assuredly approve.

Pitt, a graduate of the University of Toronto's jazz performance program, is well-supported by Fraser and Fournier, both of them first-call players with long lists of credits. The guitarist has studied with highly regarded figures such as Ben Monder and David Torn, but Stages shows he's no copycat but rather someone alchemizing influences into a personal signature. The experiences he's acquired playing with musicians such as Lina Allemano, Tim Berne, and Michael Formanek clearly hasn't impeded his development either. Even a single listen to Stages reveals, however, that Pitt's chosen to craft a trio recording where all three voices are integral as opposed to one that utilizes the others as mere backdrop.

“Fourteen Days” initiates the album pensively with a descending bass figure punctuated by guitar chords, after which cymbal splashes emerge to complete the trio presentation. Such scene-painting calls to mind Torn and Bill Frisell at their most brooding and atmospheric, but again—especially when Pitt steps forth with an arresting, entwining solo—the trio's playing doesn't register as overly derivative. Characteristic of Fraser, the drummer animates the performance with muscular playing until a reprise of the intro returns the piece to its chamber-like beginnings. Fournier takes the spotlight for an unaccompanied arco introduction to “Part Two” that sees the music take an almost Arabic turn when the others join in and the bassist repeats the track's sinuous theme. That mood piece sets the stage for “Foreboding,” which develops methodically as an explorative meditation before detonating in an episode of molten fire and sludge. The title track flirts with multiple directional possibilities, the guitarist feinting and jabbing and his partners responding in kind.

An occasional atmospheric trio meditation (e.g., “Tape Age”) offers a restful respite to the intensity of something punchier like the anthemic slow-builder “Ghosts” or “Fifteen Minutes.” With Fournier obsessively repeating a spiky figure, Pitt delivering a scalding solo, and Fraser furiously pummeling his kit, the latter track qualifies as the album's thorniest cut, though “Ghosts” certainly possesses no shortage of snarl. Recorded in a single day in October 2022 at Toronto's Union Sound Company, Stages is exactly that, a capsule document of where Pitt and his trio currently are—and not a bad place to be, by the sound of it.

September 2023


	Dan Pitt Trio: Stages Dan Pitt Music You'll find Stages in the jazz bin, but anyone looking for traditional swing or bebop covers won't hear it on Dan Pitt's second trio release and fourth overall. What you will find is adventurous writing and vigoruous interplay between the Toronto-based guitarist and his colleagues, double bassist Alex Fournier and drummer Nick Fraser. The jazz factor arises less in the styles of music featured on the forty-five-minute release and more in the facility each participant brings to the project. Even when a given track is through-composed or chamber folk-oriented, the trio broaches it with a sensibility grounded in advanced musicianship and comfort level with free play. Restricting the presentation to three musicians proves effective for giving each ample space and allowing all to be heard with optimal clarity. Lovers of instrumental electric guitar will also find much to appreciate when Pitt strikes a satisfying balance between improvisation and composition. Solos are included but are direct and delivered with concision. Pitt also isn't afraid to get loud, as shown by the rugged episode that concludes “Foreboding.” It ain't Metallica, but a metal fan would assuredly approve. Pitt, a graduate of the University of Toronto's jazz performance program, is well-supported by Fraser and Fournier, both of them first-call players with long lists of credits. The guitarist has studied with highly regarded figures such as Ben Monder and David Torn, but Stages shows he's no copycat but rather someone alchemizing influences into a personal signature. The experiences he's acquired playing with musicians such as Lina Allemano, Tim Berne, and Michael Formanek clearly hasn't impeded his development either. Even a single listen to Stages reveals, however, that Pitt's chosen to craft a trio recording where all three voices are integral as opposed to one that utilizes the others as mere backdrop. “Fourteen Days” initiates the album pensively with a descending bass figure punctuated by guitar chords, after which cymbal splashes emerge to complete the trio presentation. Such scene-painting calls to mind Torn and Bill Frisell at their most brooding and atmospheric, but again—especially when Pitt steps forth with an arresting, entwining solo—the trio's playing doesn't register as overly derivative. Characteristic of Fraser, the drummer animates the performance with muscular playing until a reprise of the intro returns the piece to its chamber-like beginnings. Fournier takes the spotlight for an unaccompanied arco introduction to “Part Two” that sees the music take an almost Arabic turn when the others join in and the bassist repeats the track's sinuous theme. That mood piece sets the stage for “Foreboding,” which develops methodically as an explorative meditation before detonating in an episode of molten fire and sludge. The title track flirts with multiple directional possibilities, the guitarist feinting and jabbing and his partners responding in kind. An occasional atmospheric trio meditation (e.g., “Tape Age”) offers a restful respite to the intensity of something punchier like the anthemic slow-builder “Ghosts” or “Fifteen Minutes.” With Fournier obsessively repeating a spiky figure, Pitt delivering a scalding solo, and Fraser furiously pummeling his kit, the latter track qualifies as the album's thorniest cut, though “Ghosts” certainly possesses no shortage of snarl. Recorded in a single day in October 2022 at Toronto's Union Sound Company, Stages is exactly that, a capsule document of where Pitt and his trio currently are—and not a bad place to be, by the sound of it. September 2023