Music Style Contemporary Jazz

Artist History I moved to New York in the fall of 1997 to finish my Masters in music performance. I studied with George Garzone, Wolfgang Muthspiel, David Liebman and Kenny Werner among others. I also started to look up contacts that I got through other Danish musicians who had spent time in New York. One of them was tenor saxophonist Matt Otto. We started playing together and hanging out, playing chess, talking about music and life in general. Through Matt I met bass player Danton Boller who was living in the same building. I also met alto saxophonist Douglas Yates at a jam session at The New School. I formed a band with Matt Otto, Douglas Yates, Danton Boller and Willie Jones III on drums. Later, I met Danish drummer Anders Hentze whom I had heard of but never met. He had been living in New York for 5 years while I had been in Copenhagen. Coincidentally, I had just done a remix of a track by the Danish band Embla on which Anders was playing. But due to incorrect liner notes, I thought Alex Riel was the drummer on the track till I met Anders, and he told me that he in fact was the one playing. At this time I had just begun writing jazz tunes again after a long period of working in other genres. I started writing tunes specifically for the instrumentation of 2 saxes, guitar, bass and drums. In spring of 1998 we recorded a demo at One Soul Studio in Manhattan.In 1998 Anders Hentze moved back to Denmark and I started looking for another drummer. I had been hearing the name Ari Hoenig, but never gotten a chance to hear him play. I went to piano wizard Jean-Michel Pilc’s trio gig with Ari Hoenig on drums and French bass player Francois Moutin. The chemistry between them was magic and I new right away that I wanted Ari and Francois in my band. It took a little while before they were both available on the same date but when we finally played together I was really thrilled. On that gig Donny McCaslin was playing tenor. I originally got Seamus Blake for the gig but in the last minute he canceled due to a bad tooth ache. Donny jumped in and played his ass off. Later I decided to cut the band to a quartet of Douglas Yates, Francois Moutin, Ari Hoenig and myself.In may of 1999 we recorded for 2 days at Dubway Studio, Manhattan. You can listen to some of the tracks we did on this site.In addition to the people mentioned above, I would like to thank the following musicians who, at one point or the other, played in the band: Jochen Rueckert, Matt Penman, Chris Lightcab, Jaques Shwarz-Bart, Terreon Gully, Darryl Hall, Michael Sarin and Owen Howard.- Thor Madsen

Group Members Thor Madsen: Guitar Douglas Yates: Alto Sax Francois Moutin: Bass Ari Hoenig: Drums

Location Brooklyn, New York - USA

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