Composer and pianist Barney McAll is a leading light of the new Brooklyn—the New York borough that is the fount of much that is new in jazz. The spectrum of McAll’s music is wide, ranging from mood-setting jazz ensemble recordings to electronica. But it all comes down to the notes, and their relation to each other. As McAll says about growing up with and learning music, “If you have a piano in the house that’s a start.” Organic music is both the source and the destination.
McAll’s fifth album, Flashbacks (Extra Celestial Arts, 2008), has its launch party April 8, 2009 at New York’s The Jazz Standard. The launch will feature leading musicians such as Billy Harper and Ben Monder. McAll moved to New York from Melbourne, Australia in 1997 after being offered a fulltime job by alto saxophonist Gary Bartz as his pianist. He describes his life before the move: “I’d been going back and forth since 1992, just staying for as long as I could or as long as I could deal, and I made contacts and started working more and more. In 1997, Gary toured Australia and I toured with him and he said, ‘Come back and join my band.’ That was a great opportunity, and that’s when I moved to New York proper. But I’d been putting my feet in the water for many years before, and it’s such a fascinating city.”
Read the full story on All About Jazz
Read Virginia Lloyd’s review of Barney McAll’s gig at the Jazz Standard.
Read a review of Flashbacks
