Search - Nate Wooley :: Wrong Shape to Be a Story Teller

This is a solo trumpet disc from local trumpet ace Nate Wooley, one of the few cats who is working hard at redefining the vocabulary and sound of the trumpet. Although saxes often get most of the ink in the history of jazz (Bird, Trane, Ornette, Dolphy, Ayler, etc.), it seems to be the trumpet players that really link the history of change (Louie Armstrong to Miles Davis to Don Cherry, Lester Bowie, etc). Over the past decade another bunch of trumpeters have signaled new sounds for that old horn. Europeans like Axel Dorner and Franz Hautzinger, as well as their American counterparts: Greg Kelley and Nate Wooley, each have done their share to expand their unique sound(s). When I first put this on, I thought someone was boiling water for tea, that same sort of whistle. This 51-minute epic solo effort show a variety of different sounds, textures and approaches to the trumpet. Notes are stretched out and bent into different shapes and often it is difficult to tell what instrument Nate is actually playing. You can tell he is concentrating as he works with small fragments of note and bending them in strange way. A most impressive effort.

- Bruce Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery