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From a Familiar Place

Label: WM Records
Released: 2017
Views: 6,460

Tracks

From a Familiar Place; Mercy, Mercy, Mercy; Blind Warriors; On Sunday, After Church; Take Five; Das Bounce; Grass Hoppers; Praeludium; Looking Ahead.

Personnel

Jeremy Pelt
trumpet
WM Project
band / ensemble / orchestra

Album Description

When Krzysztof Medyna and Andrzej Winnicki (Komeda Project alumni), set out to put a new and entirely different project together the WM Project was born. They got a bunch of amazing New York City musicians together to record a new CD. And it paid off - the album became DownBeat Magazine Editors' Pick for February 2018. The band name WM Project nods to the first letter in the surnames of pianist Andrzej Winnicki and tenor saxophonist Krzysztof Medyna, who are longtime collaborators. They performed together in Europe in the 1980s before relocating to the United States, and in the 1990s, they were members of the band Electric Breakwater. Also, they were both in the band the Komeda Project, which was dedicated to the music of Polish composer Krzysztof Komeda and recorded a few albums, including 2009’s Requiem. For their new band’s debut, the pianist and saxophonist have assembled a terrific lineup: trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, trombonist Marshall Gilkes, guitarist Rafal Sarnecki, bassist Jeff Dingler and drummer Michael Winnicki, who is Andrzej’s son. “Looking Ahead”—an Electric Breakwater tune that has been recast in an arrangement that features Pelt—displays the muscularity of a large ensemble and the nimbleness of a combo. Michael Winnicki’s “Das Bounce” illustrates the band’s mastery of shifting moods and time signatures, while Andrzej Winnicki’s buoyant “Praeludium” offers driving momentum, a potent bass line and a horn riff that becomes an earworm. The bulk of the album consists of original compositions, but the program’s two standards, “Take Five” and “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” are refreshed with creative arrangements.


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