Artist description Free-flowing Saxophone melodies float gracefully over melodic drum lines. All compositions are spontaneously improvised.

Music Style Meditative Jazz / World Fusion

Musical Influences World Jazz; African, Middle Eastern, and Oriental music; New Music, Minimalism, Impressionism; Taiko

Similar Artists Some say Wayne Shorter, Miles Davis, Pharoah Sanders, or Paul Desmond. Send us your suggestions!

Artist History Both Steven Miller and Harrison Goldberg are veteran jazz players who left mainstream jazz in 1992, with formation of the California-based performance art collaborative Tabula Rasa. The group, with keyboardist Troy Silviera and eight-string guitarist Ron Thompson (who currently leads the improv group Spiritpark) incorporated a melding of improvised acoustic/electronic music, dance, and visual art. This work later led to formation of the improvisational trio Legend, with bassist and synthesist Roger Foote, and release of their debut CD early in 1997. Neon Egypt is a collaboration of just two members of Legend, with occasional guest performances by various other artists including musicians, dancers, and visual artists. Frank W. Clough free-painted with acrylics on canvas to Neon Egypt's improvised music during portions of the taping sessions for the album Tales of Kings.

Group Members Harrison Goldberg - soprano, tenor, and alto saxophones; and Steven Miller - Shendai Ceremonial Drums, gongs, bells, cymbals, and miscellaneous percussion.

Instruments Saxophones, Shendai Ceremonial Drums, bells and percussion. The Shendai drums are a one-of-a-kind set, a cross between Taiko drums and Timpani, and are played with mallets.

Albums Tales of Kings, Hot Neon, Cool Neon (Hot Neon and Cool Neon are sub-albums composed of selected cuts from the CD Tales of Kings)

Press Reviews From liner notes by northern California art and music critic Sandy Thompson: "...The music is the tone poem migration of sensibilities, as if the Nile could flow through Chicago...The album's whole personifies a timeless river tumbling over ancient stones, or the early a.m. negotiations of a big city's streets, as if mood indigo resided in civilization's crucible. It possesses azure meditations, scarlet musings, golden speculations, each aspiring to discovery in a world of slate grey-green melancholy. It wears textures velvet to worn corduroy. It exudes an allure of rhythm that manifests the seduction of danger... Being within non-being: a place where one senses, even at the end, that the music never stopped."

Additional Info All Neon Egypt's selections are "first takes" of spontaneously improvised original music, recorded live. None of the pieces had a predetermined form or concept, a title, or even a key or time signature before play was begun. Each is truly a product of the moment. In certain quiet passages, artist Frank W. Clough's brush strokes can be heard as he free-paints a large canvas in the studio during recording.

Location Santa Rosa, California - USA

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