After a year of separation, trumpeter Dan Rosenboom, bassist Billy Mohler, and drummer Anthony Fung reunite to form a new trio dedicated to freedom and exploration, as well as reflection and healing through spontaneous composition. Refraction is an exciting and wide-ranging sonic excursion into intuitive music-making by three of the Los Angeles jazz scene's most compelling voices. Recorded in Febraury and March of 2021, this album documents their reunion and presents a program dedicated to freedom and exploration, as well as reflection and healing after a fraught year of hardship for so many around the globe.
When Fung reached out to Rosenboom to organize an informal duo jam session, the drummer and trumpeter got together at Rosenboom’s home studio in Long Beach, CA, and dove seamlessly into the fiery and beautiful improvisational connection they developed working on Rosenboom’s previous release, Points on an Infinite Line. After posting a short clip of the session on Instagram, in true pandemic fashion, bassist Billy Mohler reached out and offered to add bass parts to the recordings. In mere hours, he fleshed out the performances and added his signature driving, hypnotic bass flavor and the result sounds as cohesive as if the three were all together in the same room.
In a fortuitous twist of fate, the opportunity to play together arose with in a matter of weeks. Rosenboom was invited by the International Trumpet Guild to film a performance for their 2021 Virtual Conference, and the trio jumped at the opportunity to record and film together. In the first full recording session they had done as a band since the pandemic lock-down, the three spontaneously composed the titular suite, “Refraction,” in 4 successive takes, as well as the heart-wrenching ballad “Delusion and Consequence.”
Rosenboom is a producer and composer given to poetics, and the titles chosen invite the listener to reflect on both our current moment as a collective society, as well as some of the deep questions we have all pondered over the last 15 months, especially. Some are decidedly overt, like “Dismantle Systems of Oppression,” while others invite personal reflection, as in “Where the Waves Conspire,” and “Swallow the Sun.” All the tracks are presented in the order they were recorded, and display a shared vision and knack for spontaneous composition that is cohesive and compelling.
With Refraction, Dan Rosenboom, Billy Mohler, and Anthony Fung make an auspicious debut, as our societies reopen and the hunger to communicate spontaneously is palpable and profound in the musical community. The pandemic provided many opportunities for remote collaboration, but nothing feels so immediate as improvising with like-minded peers in the same place at the same time. While the music is certainly reflective, dynamic, and exploratory, it is equally cathartic and represents a bright horizon of new ideas and opportunity.
Visionary Creative Music