Updated: November 26, 2020
Born: April 2, 1972
Brian Kastan is a guitarist, electric/fretless bass player, composer and landscape photographer. He is best known for his original sounding improvisations and composing style, self-developed hybrid finger picking technique on guitar, and laying down big fat bass grooves and electric bass improvisations. Brian has released 20 albums as a band leader or band member. (Playing bass on 6 of the albums) Brian Kastan has composed soundtracks for TV and Film (Featuring Robert Loggia-Nominated for Academy Award The God Father-Sopranos, Martin Kove, (Karate Kid/Rambo), Gilbert Gottfried, Jimmie Walker (Goodtimes), Michael Winslow (Police Academy) Todd Bridges (Different Strokes) Jewels McCullough (Playboy Playmate/Growing Pains, Composed Soundtrack for Blue Lives Matter movie with acclaimed movie director Dylan Bank) Plus, composed soundtrack for T.V. show Hospital Arrest. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8075027/ Played guitar for Nonsuch Record Label, Rhys Cantham's “The Grissom Grail”, http://www.nonesuch.com/albums/a- crimson-grail Recorded Live at Lincoln Center in 2010. Played MTV Rock the Vote at Rutgers University Composer Representing Unites States/Focolare Movement/ Shown Via Satellite on 6 Continents (Budapest Blues) 2009. Plus performed and/or recorded with Grammy winning jazz vocalist, Miles Griffith, (Won grammy with Wynton Marsalis Blood on the Fields) Peter O'Brien, Steve Rust, Christopher Dean Sullivan, Yutaka Uchida, George Dulin, Danny Zanker, Jay Brunka, Oscar Perez, Dave Mullen, Robert Kopec, Tani Tabbal, Bob Meyer, Harvey Sorgen, Taru Alexander, Nick Gianni, Dave Berger, Eric Person,George Spanos, Travis Sullivan, Eishin Nose, Mike Pride, Ryan Berg, Eddy Khaimovich, Mike Bendy, Andy Sanesi, Juini Booth and many more
Read more. Brian is also an award winning nature photographer with shows in NYC, Europe and Asia. Brian has Shown his Photography with Artist: Milton Avery,Willem De Kooning,Francoise Gilot (Pablo Picasso),Ernest Fiene,Robert Thorne, Manuel Ayso,Rudolph Ernst,Bahram Hajou,Lev Kropivnitsky, Francoise Gilot(Pablo Picasso),Maria Kastan,John Marim,Manuel Ayso Rudolph Ernst,Albert O'Hayon,George Beecham. https://www.continuumfineartandphotography.com Collaboration work with wife Maria Kastan: https://ventipertrenta2.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/ventipertrenta2008-maria-hartmann/ Show less
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January 30, 2017
Brian Kastan "Roll The Dice On Life" New Fusion Double Album
From the cover, Brian Kastan's Roll the Dice on Life looks like a fairly straightforward jazz album. Brian, a perfectly normal-looking young man with a shaved head sits cross-legged on the ground holding his guitar in front of a pair of steel doors that feature a couple of stenciled-in dice. The cover also says that bassist Steve Rust, drummer Peter O'Brien and vocalist Miles Griffith are featured. Seems legit. So I popped this into my CD player and WTF? What's going on here? Is this for real?
What I heard, for about ten full seconds before I hit the stop button, was full-force free-jazz-rock-funk, not too distant from what you'd hear on some of Frank Zappa's more experimental releases, but with vocal improvisations that were, to say the least, very interesting. I'm not talking about Ella Fitzgerald scatting in that lovely little-girl voice of hers. I'm not talking about Liz Fraser and her ethereal and nonsensical vocalizations on old Cocteau Twins albums. I'm not talking about the involuntary humming and singing that comes from pure artistic expressions of someone like Glenn Gould or Keith Jarrett. I'm talking vocal improvisations that sound like Dave Chappelle doing his Edgar G. Robinson impersonation. I'm talking about the Cookie Monster eating an entire jar of cookies while wearing a mic. Ah, Miles Griffith. Who are you? The press release talks of his “rich provocative vocals,” which are not the words I would use. Griffith turns out to be one of those guys who's been a part of the NYC jazz scene for a couple of decades and has quite the reputation as both a musician and a band leader. Kastan, Rust and O'Brien are also serious musicians with some serious chops. Kastan's also a licensed hypnotist—but I'll bet he doesn't play this album for clients.
But here's the thing. Ten seconds of Roll the Dice on Life can be off-putting and disconcerting. But if you hang in there, crawl into this particular crazy madman vibe, you start to relax and inhabit the space. Your shoulders start to lower. You start realizing that every minute or so, things really start to click between Miles' cartoonish ramblings. Then before you know it the CD is over and wait! Look! There's TWO CDs! Awesome! By the time you make it through to the end you'll have laughed quite a bit because this odd, odd music does have a logic to it that's above and beyond the “raw energy” of outlandish improvisation. Griffith even speaks actual words at certain points, providing an even heavier anchor to the swirling and chaotic mix, especially with the two closing cuts—”Black Lives Matter” and “Black Lives Matter 2” which addresses all the craziness we've had to endure in 2016.
It's a grounded way to end an album like this, one that makes its own rules as you go along. As for me, I liked it. As for you, well, there are two types of people—those who hear ten seconds of Roll the Dice on Life and say “WTF?” and hit the stop button, and those who hear the same ten seconds, say “WTF?” and then sit down and listen to the whole thing. Or maybe, like me, you're a little of both. ;http://blogcritics.org/music-reviews-polly-gibbons-is-it-me-and-brian-kastan-roll-the-dice-on-life/ Brian Kastan’s two-CD set Roll the Dice on Life is a Versailles of dazzling guitar and vocal inventiveness over complex rhythms and riffs. Disc 1 offers eight of Kastan’s wordless compositions, plus one number credited to vocalist Miles Griffith. It embeds stark freeform-flirting jazz fusion in a crunchy vortex of propulsive surprises that will appeal to many prog-rock fans. After the nutty babble of “My Kids [sic] Dance Party,” the contemplative “Those Grey Days” sweeps up into the snarling funk of Griffith’s “Rat Attack,” which features a tense octave-bass solo from Steve Rust and a frantic guitar turn from Kastan. Griffith’s hyperspeed scat onslaught tops off his almost hyperventilating verbosity at the top of the tune. He then builds storms of vocals over the straight-ahead 4/4 of the rock-edged title track – imagine an AC/DC album with all the sounds exploded into fragments, reassembled by a devious lunatic, then played back at double- speed. Griffith’s remarkably unsettled vocalizing is a good counterpoint to Kastan’s equally creative playing, always full of surprises even as it finds a mood, a mode, and rhythmic vocabulary for each song or section. His extended solo on “Who Knows” is just astounding. Bassist Rust and drummer Peter O’Brien lock down a complex but steady web of rhythms, sounding especially juicy in the slower “Goodbye 2,” where Griffith scats with more traditional musicality than elsewhere. A trippy twist of heavy medal acidifies “The Dark Party,” which dissolves into panicky stops and starts before the opening motifs return to wrap it all up into a tight package. “Budapest Blues,” a traditional-ish blues with a pointillistic sparseness, is as laid- back as the CD gets, though with plenty of motion along the way, driven by O’Brien’s layered drumming. The twelve- tone-ish blurt of “Is What It Is” closes out the disc. To digest this album, many listeners, even fusion fans, will have to open their minds wider than they’re accustomed to doing. Disc 2, 30 minutes of live improvisation from the same quartet, may demand something else: a tolerance for non- directionality. Self-indulgent noodling or inspired psychedelic chaos? At times the music locks into a groove, even threatens to become a song, broadly defined, as in “Funky Free Out.” Helping to focus the ear, the bass and drums are mixed louder than on the studio disc. Kastan ducks out to make the first half of “Pepto Bismol Max” a bass-drums- vocals trio, then flares in with anxious chromatic ascents. “Black men and women are shot down by the police…not respected at all,” Griffiths wails in the first of a two-part “Black Lives Matter” improvisation, then echoes Marvin Gaye in asking, “What is going on?” You may ask the same thing about Roll the Dice on Life or parts thereof. But it’s worth opening yourself up to find out. http://gapplegateguitar.blogspot.com I had no idea about Brian Kastan, composer, guitarist, bandleader. Until now, that is, and his double CD Roll the Dice on Life (Kastan Records 1001). From the moment I put this one on for the first time I heard something I immediately knew was different, unheard of and very accomplished.
There is something Zappaesque, Beefhartian to it all, yet not. It is Kastanian. His guitar work is overarching everything with an exceptional structural sense. There is melodic-harmonic surprise at every turn. And the compositions have a real twist to them.
It is Brian in a quartet setting. Miles Griffith's mostly wordless vocals are a thing apart, articulating the complex melodic lines like nobody else, scatty and musically strong, yet very off the wall in the way he mumbles, grumbles, and musically growls the lines.
Steve Rust on bass and Peter O'Brien on drums are very important to the sound, too. They play some beautiful lines both as composition-realizations and as improvisation-openness.
I must say that there is something astonishing going on here, on the fringes of involved rock but most definitely within the reinvented confines of it all.
Holy cripes! This is DIFFERENT. Get your ears on it, definitely. CD Review by: http://longplay.blox.pl/strony/premiery2016.html Guitarist and composer Brian Kastan is one of the independent artists who are for themselves “and rudder sailor.” For years without being influenced zewnętrzym, follow their own chosen course, which brings special effects. Proof of this are the numerous concerts of the artist, along with fellow musicians, each attracting a loyal audience, and discography already includes nine albums copyright. Apart from activities in the framework of their own projects, the musician also taken a composer of music for films and television programs, as well as a respected photographer. At January 1, 2017 years scheduled premiere of the latest, this time: dual panel, publishing guitarist: “Roll The Dice On Life”. The first CD is a set of nine premieres of compositions, while the other filled with improvised instrumental pieces. The whole was registered on 13, 14 and 26 July 2016. in Soundworks Recording Studio. Oscillating around jazz, funk and Latin music leader, support for years Kastan friends with artists: known for his work with, among others, Wynton Marsalis and Max Roach, the eccentric singer Miles Griffith Featuring a unique technique bassist Steve Rust and respected studio musician and concert, drummer Pete O'Brien, whose services are used, among others, Edgar Winter and Roy Buchanan. The album perfectly balanced proportions between the previously created structures, composition, and loose variations, discovering new, unknown territory improvisation. Here we find humor in the style of Frank Zappa and guitar virtuosity under the sign of Robert Fripp, broken rhythms and hard guitar riffs. Admittedly, specific vocal and scaty Miles Griffith, not everyone can appeal to, but great enthusiasm felt in every sound, makes it after a few minutes we succumb to the mood boards, giving caught up in this crazy, slightly crazy atmosphere. Brian Kastan in his isolated wykreowanym style does not remain indifferent to the outside world. This is evidenced by at least the end of the album ( “Black Lives Matter”), representing a musical commentary on the current racial and political events in the US. This is definitely not relaxing music, but full of emotion and tension rock, funk - jazzy dynamic concoction cooked in the original, peculiar style.” ARTS WEEKLY The new year revealed a new jazz/rock/funk fusion: Brian Kastan’s self-released all-original Roll The Dice On Life where his bandmates prove worthy adversaries on the second of this two-disc pleasure bomb. In battle, they tend to constantly one-up each other like the great jazz cutting contests of the 1940s.Yet when they complement each other on Disc #1, the strange grooves (that take getting used to but are, ultimately, rewarding), the one dreamy ballad and the scary “Rat Attack” are all highlights. Kastan is a fascinating musician, both for the way he plays and for his lifestyle. He’s a composer whom Hollywood uses for soundtracks. He plays electric and acoustic guitar plus bass. His awards, though, are for nature photography. His work adorns museum walls in New York City, Europe and Asia. He has a Masters in Music and a degree in psychology. He’s a certified clinical hypnotist and a published author. And he knows how to pick and lead an A-List band: singer/songwriter Miles Griffith comes from the bands of Ron Carter and Wynton Marsalis. Bassist Steve Rust is on loan from PaulSimon. Drummer Peter O’Brien kicked out the jams for Edgar Winter and the late Roy Buchanan(who turned down replacing Brian Jones in the Stones) before joining Orleans. Highly Recommended! By Mike Greenblatt CD Review: http://www.midwestrecord.com/MWR1150.html BRIAN KASTAN/Roll the Dice on Life: This electric guitarist finds the corner where fusion and improv collide with each other but resolves the conflict with making this a two disc set so you can appreciate the opposite ends without the middle turning brown. A hypnotist by day, Kastan has a lot on his plate and is certainly down with the art for arts sake side of the ledger. If you like your fusion with that unbridled Euro edge running through it, this massive spontaneous set might just be your cup of tea. CHRIS SPECTOR, Editor and Publisher http://www.jazzweekly.com/2017/01/brian-kastan-roll-the-dice-on-life/ Here’s one that will be tough to categorize. Is it rap? Funk? Rock? What you have is guitarist Brian Kastan with a flexible team of Steve Rust/b and Peter O’Brien/dr. The ringer is vocalist Miles Griffith, who uses his nasally voice for wild rants, rampages, lyrics and voice’d meanderings that are like vocalese without melody. The team gets rocking on “My Kids Dance Party” and “Who Knows” while going heavy metal on “Goodbye.” Meanwhile, Griffith howls, chirps and jives through the material. Much of the material is improvised in a “live” setting, with a two part “Black Lives Matter” simply raucous rage. A sound track for Bernie Sanders fans? http://www.empirestatenews.net/2016/11/07/roll-the-dice-on-life-from-brian-kastan-is-no-risk-for-jazz-fusion-fans/ If you’re looking for a jazz-fusion new release that’s filled with robust, high energy music, “Roll the Dice on Life” from guitarist/songwriter Brian Kastan might be just your taste. A double album that features vocals by Miles Griffith, this novel work is loaded with free improvisation and raw instrumental play in each area, whether from Kastan’s heated electric guitar, bassist Steve Rust’s strength, Peter O’Brien’s rich drumming, or Griffith’s provocative voice. A talented quartet, the group has delivered a two-disc set that is now available for fans across the world, and can most easily be found here. Take a listen – it’s pretty cool. www.EmpireStateNews.com Abstract Logic This is a two-disc set. The first focuses on composition and is some mighty fine jazz-funk-rock fusion. Raging guitar, at times bordering on the unhinged, combines with an unorthodox vocal style that hits you like a cannonball to the gut. This is fiery music with real purpose, yet it still has a sense of humor and a definite coating of weirdness. Fans of Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and Screaming Headless Torsos will certainly dig this. How to describe this to those who have yet to listen? Well, it's pretty cool... imagine if Sun Ra had a Belew-like electric guitarist, or if Beefheart could rap; or perhaps imagine Bruce Hampton singing for Zappa with full creative freedom. Grady Harp Jazz Review Balancing the integrity of composed songs with the fierce energy activated by free improvisation Important on so many levels, Brian Kastan and Miles Griffith have a lot to say and they say it so well.
Guitarist and composer Brian Kastan is one of the independent artists who are for themselves “and rudder sailor.” For years without being influenced zewnętrzym, follow their own chosen course, which brings special effects. Proof of this are the numerous concerts of the artist, along with fellow musicians, each attracting a loyal audience, and discography already includes nine albums copyright. Apart from activities in the framework of their own projects, the musician also taken a composer of music for films and television programs, as well as a respected photographer. At January 1, 2017 years scheduled premiere of the latest, this time: dual panel, publishing guitarist: “Roll The Dice On Life”. The first CD is a set of nine premieres of compositions, while the other filled with improvised instrumental pieces. The whole was registered on 13, 14 and 26 July 2016. in Soundworks Recording Studio. Oscillating around jazz, funk and Latin music leader, support for years Kastan friends with artists: known for his work with, among others, Wynton Marsalis and Max Roach, the eccentric singer Miles Griffith Featuring a unique technique bassist Steve Rust and respected studio musician and concert, drummer Pete O'Brien, whose services are used, among others, Edgar Winter and Roy Buchanan.
The album perfectly balanced proportions between the previously created structures, composition, and loose variations, discovering new, unknown territory improvisation. Here we find humor in the style of Frank Zappa and guitar virtuosity under the sign of Robert Fripp, broken rhythms and hard guitar riffs. Admittedly, specific vocal and scaty Miles Griffith, not everyone can appeal to, but great enthusiasm felt in every sound, makes it after a few minutes we succumb to the mood boards, giving caught up in this crazy, slightly crazy atmosphere.
Brian Kastan in his isolated wykreowanym style does not remain indifferent to the outside world. This is evidenced by at least the end of the album ( “Black Lives Matter”), representing a musical commentary on the current racial and political events in the US.
This is definitely not relaxing music, but full of emotion and tension rock, funk - jazzy dynamic concoction cooked in the original, peculiar style.”
CD Review: http://www.midwestrecord.com/MWR1150.html BRIAN KASTAN/Roll the Dice on Life: This electric guitarist finds the corner where fusion and improv collide with each other but resolves the conflict with making this a two disc set so you can appreciate the opposite ends without the middle turning brown. A hypnotist by day, Kastan has a lot on his plate and is certainly down with the art for arts sake side of the ledger. If you like your fusion with that unbridled Euro edge running through it, this massive spontaneous set might just be your cup of tea. CHRIS SPECTOR, Editor and Publisher
http://www.jazzweekly.com/2017/01/brian-kastan-roll-the-dice-on-life/
Here’s one that will be tough to categorize. Is it rap? Funk? Rock? What you have is guitarist Brian Kastan with a flexible team of Steve Rust/b and Peter O’Brien/dr. The ringer is vocalist Miles Griffith, who uses his nasally voice for wild rants, rampages, lyrics and voice’d meanderings that are like vocalese without melody. The team gets rocking on “My Kids Dance Party” and “Who Knows” while going heavy metal on “Goodbye.” Meanwhile, Griffith howls, chirps and jives through the material. Much of the material is improvised in a “live” setting, with a two part “Black Lives Matter” simply raucous rage. A sound track for Bernie Sanders fans? http://www.empirestatenews.net/2016/11/07/roll-the-dice-on-life-from-brian-kastan- is-no-risk-for-jazz-fusion-fans/ If you’re looking for a jazz-fusion new release that’s filled with robust, high energy music, “Roll the Dice on Life” from guitarist/songwriter Brian Kastan might be just your taste. A double album that features vocals by Miles Griffith, this novel work is loaded with free improvisation and raw instrumental play in each area, whether from Kastan’s heated electric guitar, bassist Steve Rust’s strength, Peter O’Brien’s rich drumming, or Griffith’s provocative voice. A talented quartet, the group has delivered a two-disc set that is now available for fans across the world, and can most easily be found here. Take a listen – it’s pretty cool. www.EmpireStateNews.com
Grady Harp Jazz Review Balancing the integrity of composed songs with the fierce energy activated by free improvisation Important on so many levels, Brian Kastan and Miles Griffith have a lot to say and they say it so well.
John Scofield
guitar
