Choose artist...
Home   >   Projects   >   Just Before Midnight   >   Press Release

Track Listing:

1
Pow, Pow, Pow, Pow — Yeah! quintet 5:55
 
2
Just Before Midnight (Etude #3) septet 7:26
 
3
Owed To J.C. (Ode To John Coltrane) quartet 1 8:14
 
4
Isle Of Kai septet 8:58
 
5
...And Another Thing (Etude #1) quintet 6:04
 
6
I Dream of Danny Playing Guitar quartet 2 6:20
 
7
Hindsight sextet 5:43
 
8
“The Winter Of Our Discontent” (Etude #2) septet 7:09
 
9
Song Without A Word Dominic Cheli, solo piano 4:59
 

Peter Kogan :

Just Before Midnight

With Just Before Midnight, his fourth album since 2013, the constantly evolving and very productive drummer-composer Peter Kogan delivers another far- ranging feast of originals (and a knowing arrangement of Cedar Walton’s classic Hindsight). All the qualities that made Kogan’s previous albums attractive — sophisticated-yet-accessible compositions, great players and soloists, and just enough quirkiness to make it interesting and fun — are here again, in abundance.
Kogan is the rare percussionist who has been able to travel back and forth between jazz, rock, and blues idioms and the classical world. He jobbed around New York City with jazz, rock, and blues bands (along the
way backing up blues masters Lightnin’ Hopkins, Floyd Jones, and Honeyboy Edwards, and gigging with the Larry Elgart Orchestra) but could also stand behind a set of timpani in a concert hall with a major symphony orchestra. This kind of versatility — and crossover — is quite exceptional for a percussionist.

Kogan did stints with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the Honolulu Symphony before landing a spot with the highly esteemed and Grammy-winning Minnesota Orchestra, where he served as principal timpanist for 29 years. But classical training and employment never dimmed his love of jazz, which reaches back to his childhood. This latest chapter in Kogan’s musical career — as a jazz drummer and bandleader — brings him full circle, back to the music that originally inspired him to play the drums.

On this recording, Kogan uses groups of varying sizes, from a quartet up to a septet (he dubs the seven-piece group his “Monsterful Wonderband”) to give voice to his finely conceived compositions. His band has also become something of an incubator for young talent. For the most part, the crew on this CD definitely skews younger, but these musicians handle the challenging material with confident mastery.

Remember the names — I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about these outstanding musicians in the future, if you haven’t already.
One thing to understand about this record:

Each of these songs is a fully realized composition that takes you on a little trip, through changing moods and feelings, “sights” and sounds. While there are some stylistic nods to classic Blue Note and Impulse recordings of the 1960s, Kogan never falls back on the easy but tired formula of “Song/Bunch of solos over the song’s chord progression/Song once more and out.” More like a series of trips to a wide variety of destinations. Definitely worth taking the whole tour!

Track Listing 
1 Pow, Pow, Pow, Pow — Yeah! quintet 5:55
2 Just Before Midnight (Etude #3) septet 7:26
3 Owed To J.C. (Ode To John Coltrane) quartet 1 8:14
4 Isle Of Kai septet 8:58
5 ...And Another Thing (Etude #1) quintet 6:04
6 I Dream of Danny Playing Guitar quartet 2 6:20
7 Hindsight sextet 5:43
8 “The Winter Of Our Discontent” (Etude #2) septet 7:09
9 Song Without A Word Dominic Cheli, solo piano 4:59

Pow, Pow, Pow, Pow — Yeah! An incendiary drum intro gives way to a tight, tough hard bop head that would have felt at right home on a 1960s Jazz Messengers date. As you might expect from the title,
Kogan swings and punches ferociously where called for, but like Art Blakey, can dial the flame down to low in a heartbeat, guiding the band along with an intense rhythmic undercurrent.

The title cut, Just Before Midnight (Etude no. 3), starts out like a haunting piano exercise built on a series of whole-tone patterns conjuring an old grandfather clock in a dark hallway, bathed in cold moonlight.
These simple yet mysterious patterns soon morph into an up-tempo romp along the lines of Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” (i.e., a similarly tricky chord progression to improvise over). The players here rise to the challenge with great aplomb. The complex arrangement sounds tight and polished. After the high-energy, hang-on-for- dear-life blowing, the song concludes with the original ear-tickling moon-mystery pattern, which brings us right up to the stroke of midnight.

Owed to J.C. (Owed to John Coltrane) pays more direct tribute to the tenor saxophone giant during his Impulse Records period with the “classic quartet” of McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, and Jimmy Garrison. The composition captures Coltrane’s seriousness of purpose and deep spirituality. After with a slow, brooding, rubato intro, a dancing bass figure brings the song into a loping Afro-Cuban 15/8 pulse for the main statement and solos. There is a somber and searching quality to this piece that clearly hearkens back to Coltrane.

Isle of Kai initially teases a feeling that you might be in for some beach rock but gracefully elides into a island rhythm that feels like a warm caressing breeze. Sunny horn harmonies suggest a trip to the tropics. But,
as with all of Kogan’s songs, there is compositional rigor here as well, revealed in a beautifully rendered interlude between the initial statement and the solos, as well as a brand new theme that appears near the end, just before the restatement of the original melody.

..And Another Thing (Etude no. 1) is a surging, searching jazz waltz that somehow manages to transform into a sort of swinging samba beat for a spell during the initial statement of the tune. The soloists negotiate the constantly shifting chords with a grace that belies their complexity.

I Dream of Danny Playing Guitar is a lilting, bluesy straight-eighths number dedicated to Kogan’s cousin (and sometime musical compatriot) Danny Kalb. Kalb achieved fame as lead guitarist of The Blues Project, a band founded in 1965 whose sound blended folk, rock, blues, and jazz. Kogan played drums with the band in its earliest phase.

Hindsight by legendary pianist-composer Cedar Walton, is the only song on this recording not penned by Kogan, though he did write the impactful, cascading arrangement, which makes fine use of the horn section in fleshing out Walton’s rich harmonies.

The Winter of Our Discontent (Etude no. 2) was written during the first winter of Covid lockdown. It’s 5/4 meter seems to conjure the caged-in feeling of that time. The modern-sounding harmonies create subtle mood shifts between uncertainty, despair, glimpses of hope, acceptance, adaptation.

Song Without A Word is a tender and tuneful closer written by Kogan for solo piano and performed here by Dominic Cheli. Deceptively simple, the composition contains a surprising amount of development for its modest duration of 4 minutes and 59 seconds (just before 5:00!) It somehow manages to sound both contemporary and historical — almost like a tune Debussy might write if he were around today.

Quartet 1 is Pete Whitman, tenor sax; Abebi Stafford, piano; Charlie Lincoln, bass; and Peter Kogan, drums
Quartet 2 is Geoff LeCrone, guitar; Will Kjeer, piano; Kameron Markworth, bass; and Peter Kogan, drums
Sextet is Mitch Van Laar, trumpet; Pete Whitman, tenor sax; Nick Syman, trombone; Will Kjeer, piano; Kameron Markworth, bass; and Peter Kogan, drums
Solo piano by Dominic Cheli, Song Without a Word, recorded in Los Angeles, March 21, 2022
All tunes written and arranged by Peter Kogan except Hindsight, written by Cedar Walton and arranged by Peter Kogan
Isle of Kai composed by Peter Kogan and Elliot Levy, arranged by Peter Kogan

PeterKoganMusic.com
© 2022 Peter Kogan All rights reserved
Unathorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws Koganote KR004