Press Roundup for Touch My Beloved’s Thought

The reviews for Greg Ward‘s Touch My Beloved ‘s Thought are starting to come in. Here’s a selection:

Ben Ratliff laud’s the album in his recent piece on the Chicago jazz scene:

NYTimes

“…Mr. Ward’s album, a six-part suite for 11 musicians, is a reckoning with Charles Mingus’s 1963 album “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady.” “Touch” was written to accompany a dance piece by the choreographer Onye Ozuzu, and it extrapolates from parts of the old work; Mr. Ward, a strong narrative improviser with a keening tone, leads the ensemble through sweeping melodies.”
-Ben Ratliff, The New York Times

NYC Jazz Record

Ward isn’t just inspired by the earlier work, he’s also created a piece imbued with the Mingus aesthetic, full of such tropes and gestures as dynamic and tempo acceleration; multiple lines creating polyphony; solos building and being supported by growingly insistent, muscular ensemble backgrounds; and the controlled cacophony of ‘free’ group improvisation.”
-George Kanzler, The New York City Jazz Record

Read the entire review here.

Step Tempest 1

One can marvel at the arrangements, how the composer/arranger shares the melody among the participants, how the solos naturally rise out of the music, how each musician’s voice counts, and how the ensemble gels in front of a live audience…”
-Richard Kamins, Step Tempest

Read the entire review here.

You can pre-order the album at Bandcamp and iTunes ahead of the July 8 release.

And don’t miss the album release shows in New York (July 8) and Chicago (July 29-30).

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