Dead Cat Bounce

Dead Cat Bounce, Boston's Outstanding Jazz Act (Boston Music Awards, Phoenix Music Poll and Improper Bostonian) and recipient of commissions from Meet the Composer and Chamber Music America, is one of the few recent jazz bands to have arrived on the scene with its own distinctive voice. Featuring four saxophones of all ranges plus upright bass and drums, Dead Cat Bounce is the unique artistic vision of Matt Steckler, its founder and leader. The group formed late in 1997 as a recording project. Word of DCB's high caliber as a performance ensemble quickly spread, and now the group plays festivals, concert series and notable clubs throughout North America.

Dead Cat Bounce, Boston's Outstanding Jazz Act (Boston Music Awards, Phoenix Music Poll and Improper Bostonian) and recipient of commissions from Meet the Composer and Chamber Music America, is one of the few recent jazz bands to have arrived on the scene with its own distinctive voice. Featuring four saxophones of all ranges plus upright bass and drums, Dead Cat Bounce is the unique artistic vision of Matt Steckler, its founder and leader. The group formed late in 1997 as a recording project. Word of DCB's high caliber as a performance ensemble quickly spread, and now the group plays festivals, concert series and notable clubs throughout North America.

Dead Cat Bounce invokes Charles Mingus and the World Saxophone Quartet with their “tightly arranged, swirling contrapuntal reeds and multi-part, blues n' roots-infused tricky compositions” (Jon Garelick, the Boston Phoenix). Their eclectic approach to rhythm is informed by traditions from the Caribbean, Deep South, Brazil, West Africa, Eastern Europe and Detroit. In Dead Cat Bounce, solo and collective improvisations energetically complement the poise of its ever-expanding compositional repertoire. According to Dave Liebman, Dead Cat Bounce “does it all with exquisite writing, the subtle use of a bass-drum rhythm section and above all a definite sense of communication between the members that I am sure will be apparent to even the casual listener. These young, Boston-based musicians are not just playing the music on the page, but listening and communing together.”

Dead Cat Bounce's members are on the cutting edge of today's jazz, rock and world music scenes and have performed and recorded with: Dave Douglas, Steve Lacy, Lonnie Plaxico, Roswell Rudd, Matt Wilson, Anthony Braxton, Cecil McBee, Michael Cain, Pheeroan Aklaff, Curtis Fowlkes, Leroy Jenkins, Bob Moses, the Either/Orchestra, Miracle Orchestra, Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra, the Fela Project, as well as smaller groups in which individual members lead. Most of DCB's lineup attended the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and studied there with such renowned artists as Danilo P�rez, Jerry Bergonzi, George Garzone, Bob Moses and Cecil McBee.

Dead Cat Bounce boasts a nuclear mailing list already thousands strong, and is regularly advertised on the lists and websites of some of the above-mentioned peripheral combos. The CDs Home Speaks to the Wandering (Innova), Lucky By Association and Legends of the Nar (Chonsky) are available for sale at all live Dead Cat Bounce performances.

Dead Cat Bounce: Praise & Recognition

Recipient of a 2003 New Works: Presentation grant from Chamber Music America/Doris Duke Charitable Foundation: “[Matt Steckler's] whip-smart sextet of four saxes, bass, and drums rolls through his multi-sectioned compositions with toe-tapping ease. Skewed tangos, deviant marches, churchy hymns, and dissonant abstraction, swing band riffs, collective improvisations, and individual solos roll and tumble their way over funky vamps, swinging grooves and unclassifiable beats. Great ensemble playing, high spirits, an endearing, but twisted, sense of fun make Dead Cat's second release a winner.” - Ed Hazell, Signal to Noise Magazine

“I am sure you will be impressed by the great writing, the originality of style, the wide variety of moods, individual solo efforts and most of all, a real group that is single minded and totally involved in the music.” - Dave Liebman, saxophonist and multi-label recording artist

Winner of Boston Phoenix Best Music Poll 2001 and 2002 in the category of Best Local Jazz Act: “Dead Cat Bounce epitomize the best of the Boston jazz scene - to make the most of working outside conventional commercial structures, to treat a band as a workshop of ideas, to look forward while drawing on the best of the past. Think of Mingus's swirling counterpoint and rhythm shifts with the similarly rich voicings and solo-ensemble balance of the World Saxophone Quartet. What more could you ask for?” - Jon Garelick, The Boston Phoenix

Winner of Best Local Jazz at the 2002 Boston Music Awards and a 2002 Meet the Composer grant to premiere the suite Home Speaks to the Wandering in several cities on tour: “With Dead Cat Bounce twentysomething Boston saxophonist Matt Steckler livens up the mix: incorporating a sensibility weaned on rock and at least on speaking terms with jam bands, the music easily morphs from straight-ahead jazz rhythms into a cool backbeat, a tango lilt, or a punk-derived pulse? The writing offers enough variety to occasionally make you forget that all the music comes from these same six guys.” - Neil Tesser, Chicago Reader Critic's Choice

Critic's Tip and Sound Choice honors from the Boston Globe 1/6/01 and 10/5/01: “The six-piece group? has become one of Boston's most original jazz units.” - Bob Blumenthal, Boston Globe

“DCB revels in a reed-driven sound marked by sharply contrasting forms, textures and tones...strident, joyful, lush and strutting use of a horn section.” - Mike Joyce, Washington Post

“Made of fresh ingredients, their music was all abrupt cadences, fast-mutating sonorities and jagged surfaces, but it was polished brightly to an impressive sheen, as the four-saxes-and-rhythm-section sextet just gets better and better. Dead Cat Bounce presented uncompromisingly challenging but often jubilant tunes? Smart, spirited and soulful, the music rocked to exciting effect all night.” - Michael Hochanadel, the Daily Gazette (NYS)

“Dead Cat Bounce is addictive...this group takes the sax quartet, mixes in bass and drums, and ends up with the unique sound that results when high caliber musicians share a musical vision and a love of innovation. DCB possesses these qualities, which combine to make Legends of the Nar a triumph.” - Katie DeBonville, Northeast Performer, Spotlites Section

“[Dead Cat Bounce's] reputation - for knife-sharp technique, and formal and stylistic elasticity - is quickly beginning to precede them. The Cats drop proverbial science with headstrong melodic and structural foundations, Mingus-tinged arrangement sensibilities, and an almost Mancini-like accessibility and playfulness. They conjure solid, straightforward grooves as well as more interstellar regions, while continually presenting tight riffs, and expressing memorable melodies.” - Jordan Weeks, Pittsburgh City Paper

“Working some of the outside-the-box terrain favored by bands such as the 29th Street Sax Quartet and the World Sax Quartet? Dead Cat Bounce manages to blend serious composition and improvisation with wit, never an easy trick to pull off.” - Bob Young, Boston Herald

“The solos are almost always exciting. The compositions nicely combine a gritty, bluesy feel with intricate, catchy heads. The final product is fun, good music, probably a lot of fun to shake your hips to. In other words, this is definitely worth a listen, and then several more.” - Eric Saidel, Cadence Magazine

“Matt Steckler intones the frivolous and laughable - the distinctly non-uptight - with his compositions on Dead Cat Bounce's Lucky By Association. [He] proves himself a talented composer, and this group shows substantial potential in revealing the best in his material.” - Jonathan Babu, Northeast Performer Magazine, Spotlites Section

o Featured on WGBH's “Eric in the Evening” 10/01 and 1/02; on WERS 88.9 FM Boston as part of Live Music Week 4/99 and 4/00; on WBUR/National Public Radio 90.9 FM's “Hear & Now” 7/00; WEMU Ann Arbor, WGYU Grand Rapids, Miles Ahead Jazz Radio Chicago, KDHX St. Louis, KCCK Cedar Rapids