Everything Is Alive Hank Roberts

• 1Crew Cut04:59
• 2Cayuga06:32
• 3Easy's Pocket04:50
• 4Treats with a Blind Dog05:14
• 5Joker's Ace05:32
• 6Open Gate08:11
• 7Necklace05:12
• 8Jb03:17
• 9Sapphire07:39
• 10Sapphire Blue03:02
• Total Runtime54:28

Info for Everything Is Alive

Since the 80's improvisational cellist Hank Roberts has been creating new sounds on the cello. His rhythmic, harmonic, and emotional approach to the cello distinguishes him as a unique voice on the instrument and in the world of new music and jazz. Hank Roberts creates an extensive body of music as a composer and recording artist, and also as one who collaborates with world class artists such as Bill Frisell, Hal Willner, Tim Berne, Andy Summers, Dave King and Ethan Iverson from “The Bad Plus”, Donna the Buffalo, Sim Redmond Band, Kevin Kinsella, Wingnut, and Ti Ti Chickapea.

In the 80's and early 90's Hank Roberts lives near New York City and is performing and recording with his own groups Black Pastels, Miniture, Arcado String Trio and with artists such as the Bill Frisell Band, Tim Berne, John Zorn, Stefan Winter's program music »The Little Trumpet«, Django Bates, Mark Feldman, Marilyn Crispell, Mark Dresser, Joey Baron, Marty Ehrlich, Gerry Hemingway, Mark Ribot, DK Dyson, and Jerome Harris. He has nine CD releases on the ‘Winter&Winter’ label, including several with The Arcado String Trio and Miniature.

In 2008 he presents on Winter & Winter the album »Green« featuring the French guitarist Marc Ducret and Jim Black on drums. Sydney Morning Herald: "Beautifully spacious improvisations congeal into folky songs, jazzy interludes, sunny, back-porch grooves or even atmospheric rock on this extraordinary CD."

In 2010 and 2011 Hank Roberts is happy to compose the music for the album »Everything Is Alive« for longtime friends. This music is recorded 'live-to-analog-two-track' without any overdubs and without any digital effects. The live creation of the music and the natural sound experience is the focus of this album. "When I thought about making this new record »Everything Is Alive«, I felt that I wanted to work with not only great musicians, but good friends. I met Bill Frisell and Jerome Harris back in 1975. Our friendships have prospered along with our musical friendship over the past 36 years. Kenny Wollesen and I don't have that same long-time history, but he is a friend, and is so perfect for this music; his amazing crisp time-feels and abundant colors are just what I wanted. Stefan Winter and I have worked together since 1987. I felt that this group of people would be perfect for the compositions I had been working on over the past years."

On »Everything Is Alive« Hank Roberts presents a wondrous journey into the living colors of North American's music world of our days. He plays with elements of folk, jazz, rock, rhythm 'n' blues, and improvisation. It is not easy to categorize his music but listeners who appreciate to step across the border will enjoy to hear for example elements of music from native American music as well as folk and country musicians. But Hank Roberts does not just quote this music styles, he uses essences and he mixes these elements to create his own sounds. Hank Roberts has his own identity even though his roots are widespread. The result is a colourful, open and warmhearted hotchpotch which is totally in keeping with the untamed creativity and sparkling energy of Hank Roberts. "The compositions on this recording embrace many of the musical energies that I love and have enjoyed playing over many years. Each piece has a very distinct and declarative personality written into it, and working with this particular group of fantastic musicians, one of the key elements was to create structures that would allow for the interplay, development and excitement that improvisation brings. Ultimately, we came up with something wonderfully fresh and alive to my ears, and beyond all expectations." »Crew Cut« opens the album with pulsing rhythms followed by the wonderful ballad »Cayuga". Also »Easy's Pocket«, the third track is a very personal composition by Hank Roberts.

The quartet with Bill Frisell on guitar, Jerome Harris on bass guitar, Kenny Wollesen on drums and percussion and Hank Roberts on vocals and cello has in an excellent musical understanding.

“When I first heard Hank Roberts' music many years ago, he had already found his own way of playing, his own voice. Since then, that voice has been getting stronger, clearer, more powerful, more beautiful, more soulful. (...) It's so rare to hear music this pure and it's so inspiring to know someone with the strength and courage to stay so true.” (Bill Frisell)

The young Japanese painter Yuko Takatsudo creates new oil paintings on canvas for Hank Roberts' album »Everything Is Alive«. In 2011 Winter&Winter has presented her works in the show- and listening-room in Munich. Supremely inventive, exciting, and provocative like Hank Roberts' music.

"Hank Roberts brings his own unique jazz/classical/roots-music sensibility to Everything Is Alive. Leading a chamber-style quartet including bassist and guitarist Jerome Harris and drummer Kenny Wollesen, Roberts nibbles at folk, gospel and Native Americana while partaking of spatial and atonal strategies and sound experiments." (Lloyd Sachs, jazztimes)

Hank Roberts, cello
Bill Frisell, guitar
Jerome Harris, bass
Kenny Wollesen, drums, percussion

Hank Roberts
Even in a parallel universe where jazz cellists are as common as tenor madmen and trumpet-blowing boppers, Hank Roberts would be utterly unique. Over his nearly four-decade career, Roberts has forged a compelling original voice on the cello, encompassing abstract improvisation and soulful folk melodies, intricate new-music compositions and vigorous rock songs. Roberts’ latest CD, »Everything Is Alive«, features three long-time compatriots: guitarist Bill Frisell, bassist Jerome Harris, and drummer Kenny Wollesen. The 2012 Winter & Winter release continues the cellist’s relationship with producer Stefan Winter, which stretches back through the bulk of Robert’s discography. The album’s ten original compositions speak with a direct voice inflected with roots, rock and funk accents.

Born in Terre Haute, Indiana, Roberts studied at Berklee and made his name on the legendary Downtown scene in 1980s New York. Faced with a dearth of mentors or peers on his instrument, he carved his own path through that fertile ground alongside such frequent collaborators as Bill Frisell, Tim Berne, Marc Ribot and John Zorn, finding a second home at the famed Knitting Factory. Like those fellow innovators, Roberts is equally at home in grand concert halls or dingy rock clubs, covering a wide swath of modern music.

The list of names with whom Roberts has shared stages or studios is staggering, including members of U2, Gavin Friday, Sting, Joel Grey, David Sanborn, Lydia Lunch, Mamadou Diabate, Andy Summers, Pat Metheny, Flo and Eddie, Gary Burton, Shane McGowan, and Julius Hemphill.

As a child, Roberts studied several different instruments and dreamed of one day becoming “a rock and blues guitar player, a jazz trombonist, and a classical cellist.” He has achieved all three, but on a single instrument, expanding the capability and vocabulary of the cello to accommodate his restless and wide-ranging imagination. He often accompanies himself with wordless vocals, emphasizing the pristine lyricism of his writing, even in the most angular and abstract of settings. He has recently assembled a new quartet with Wollesen, Danish guitarist Jakob Bro, and Seattle bassist Luke Bergman and leads a trio with pianist John Stetch and drummer Jim Black. His 2008 CD Green, with Black and French guitarist Marc Ducret, won that year’s German Recording Critics’ Award. He is also a member of the folk group Ti Ti Chickpea and the anti-voilence ensemble Wiggy Dog Boy, which features his son on guitar. His solo performances are singularly compelling and unpredictable, wending from jagged dissonance to intoxicating pop songcraft.

Roberts is currently a member of Frisell’s 858 Quartet alongside violist Eyvind Kang and violinist Jenny Scheinman, and appeared on the guitarist’s Grammy-winning 2004 release Unspeakable. He also recently performed with the expanded eight-piece version of that group at Manhattan’s Park Avenue Armory, accompanying a reading of Allen Ginsberg’s “Kaddish” read by Hal Willner and Chloe Webb with music composed by Frisell, whose collaboration and friendship with Roberts dates back to 1975.

He recently also reunited with saxophonist Tim Berne in the quartet Buffalo Collision, also featuring pianist Ethan Iverson and drummer Dave King of The Bad Plus. Roberts and Berne began working together in the late eighties and formed the trio Miniature with drummer Joey Baron. At the same time, he co-founded the Arcado String Trio with bassist Mark Dresser and violinist Mark Feldman; in 1992, each member of the trio wrote an orchestral piece for Arcado and Germany’s WDR Orchestra. Based since 1989 in the more serene environs of Ithaca, New York, Roberts finds inspiration in the area’s thriving Americana and folk music scene, which threads into his own work in intriguing and surprising ways. He performs annually at the Finger Lakes GrassRoots Festival, which spans a range of music from old-timey Americana to African and Cajun music. He’s shared that stage with artists such as Mamadou Diabate, Jeb Puryear, Keith Secola, Nery Arevalo, Martin Simpson, the Sim Redmond Band, John Brown's Body, and Donna the Buffalo.

Roberts serves as a musical consultant for The Readers’ Theatre of Ithaca, for which he recently composed and performed a solo cello/voice score for a performance of Chekov's “Uncle Vanya.” He also contributed arrangements and appears in the upcoming film Greetings From Tim Buckley, which will premiere at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. The film, about the ill-fated father-and-son singer-songwriters Tim and Jeff Buckley, recreates a pivotal 1991 concert that Roberts performed with Jeff Buckley at St. Ann's Church in Brooklyn.

In addition to his active performing career, Roberts has passed his knowledge on to new generations of creative musicians at educational institutions such as the Banff Center in Canada, Ithaca College, Cornell University and others.

This album contains no booklet.