Mark Lowrey: Press

Check out this nice article titled: Mark Lowrey figures out the key to the future of jazz.

This is a little blurb about me for my nomination in the category "Best Jazz Artist" in the Pitch Magazine's 2007 music awards:
"After playing alongside several past Pitch Music Award nominees, (Tango Lorca, Shay Estes) Mark Lowrey earns his first nod as a bandleader. The pianist heads a trio with bassist Jeff Harshbarger and drummer Sam Wisman that gigs regularly at McCormick & Schmick's, Boozefish, and JP Winebar. With the same rhythm section plus Estes on vocals, Lowrey also leads a quartet that frequently plays Jardines. At these gigs, Lowrey plays fluid, melodic jazz that initially adds to the venue's ambience, then makes diners forget their plates altogether. He's also been known to spice up his sets with exotic Afro-Cuban numbers, Peruvian waltzes, and Tortoise covers.

Mark and Shay in Thirty Under Thirty
This is an article from The Kansas City Star's "Thirty Under Thirty" feature in the Preview section for Thursday, May 18, 2006, which pertains to youngish people invloved in the art, music, and culture arenas in Kansas City. There is a link to the entire feature at the bottom of the article.

| MUSIC DUO RISES FROM CIGARETTE ASH |
By TIMOTHY FINN The Kansas City Star

Shay Estes says she and partner Mark Lowery are both hams. "He likes to do goofy things with serious songs and serious things with goofy songs."

SHAY ESTES

Singer

Age: 25

MARK LOWREY

Pianist

Age: 25

Money led Shay Estes to Mark Lowrey. Money and cigarettes, that is.

Two years ago she was singing cabaret with the Von Hodads and the song-and-dance troupe the Rushin' Roulettes. A cigarette representative came looking for a lounge act to perform at an event for a big paycheck.

"I couldn't get anyone to commit to it," Estes says, "and I wasnt going to lose a $1,500 payday. I figured I knew enough songs so I'd find a pianist I could work with and do it. I asked around and everyone kept telling me to ask Mark Lowrey."

Lowrey has been a pianist in the local jazz scene for years, most notably at Fedora's, where hed been the house pianist.

Estes has been involved in the local indie-music scene for years, too: with the Von Hodads, who gigged regularly at Frankies on the Plaza, with the Roulettes and with the rock band Silver Shore.

In April 2004 she and Lowrey met and rehearsed for the first time. Sparks flew, you could say. These days they're good friends and regulars in places like Jardine's, where they perform monthly, and the Phoenix downtown, where they perform the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month.

Their show isn't strictly anything except entertaining, Estes says.

"It isn't jazz because I'm not a real jazz singer. I sing a lot of the songs my mom used to listen to -- Doris Day, Nat King Cole, some torch songs. It's a sexy, romantic show.

Timothy Finn | The Star

Like Brandon Draper...(Mark Lowrey) is Hotcakes!

The project he has been planning for a few years will finally hit the stage this weekend, and Mark Lowrey is having a mild case of “be careful what you wish for.”

On Friday night at the RecordBar, he will lead a cast of 17 local musicians and vocalists in “Mark Lowrey Presents: Radiohead Tribute,” two hours of homage to one of the world’s most revered rock bands. This won’t be the normal tribute show either; Lowrey and several friends have rearranged the band’s music into something completely different — something otherworldly.

“We’re doing modern rock songs in several different contexts: chamber music context or Afro-Cuban, traditional Brazilian — styles that were defined long before Radiohead was a band,” he said. “We will preserve the basic structures of the songs — the melodies — but rearrange them. So people will need to be open-minded about them.”

Lowrey has been playing Radiohead songs for years, in his solo-piano gigs at various jazz clubs around town and with jazz singer Shay Estes, his longtime vocal partner.

“Shay has been doing ‘Talk Show Host’ from the ‘Romeo and Juliet’ soundtrack for years,” Lowrey said. “That’s one of the songs we already had arrangements for.

“Shay and I have wanted to do this for a long time because the band is so monumental and so important to both of us. I feel like I now have the resources to do it, meaning I was ready as an artist to take this on and I was able to convince some of the finest artists in town to join me.”

That group of fellow artists is a who’s who of local music talent from many genres, including all of Lowrey’s teammates in the Barclay Martin Ensemble and Trio ALL: Rick Willoughby, Giuliano Mingucci, Zack Albetta and Ben Leifer. There will also be a string quartet featuring Laurel Morgan of In the Pines and the Quixotic orchestra. Vocalists will include Estes, Barclay Martin, Billy Smith and Enrique Chi, who will perform several numbers in Spanish.

The set list will comprise about 20 songs, Lowrey said, including one whose arrangement was still in the final stages early this week, “Idioteque.” He used that as an example of how he approached this project.

“The broad concept of that song is this,” he said, pounding out a rhythm on a table top. “It’s got a hard-core, straight-up drum-heavy rock beat that plays between half-time and double-time. The song is limited in tonality — well, I mean there aren’t a million chord changes like in Coltrane. It has moments where there is voice and drums only. It got me thinking of a tempo like a rumba or a clave and it wasn’t hard to find the commonalities and connect the dots and turn the song into an Afro-Cuban piece. It’s not that far of a stretch.”

Some of the rearrangements are true to the original versions, he said, but even those that stray stick to the original idea of the song.

“We don’t change the melody or the lyrics,” he said. “That said, there are times when the approach gets whimsical, you’ll notice that the semantics have been played with. I’m an instrumental musician so I didn’t necessarily think first of lyrical content. But when it’s all done, the hope is you’ll recognize the essence of the original.

“And I am in no way the only arranger. Laurel and Rick and Barclay did their own thing,” he said. “And some of us got together and bounced around some ideas. I relied heavily on the skills and ideas of the other musicians.”
This isn’t Lowrey’s first tribute project. He was in the band that performed in the re-creation of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” And last year he conducted his own tribute to Ben Folds, a show of more modest ambitions.

“We gave the vocalists on that project some leeway because we wanted them to sing like themselves and not try to emulate the nasally Ben Folds thing,” he said, “but the songs were really true to themselves. This time, we’re turning the music on its ear.”

That turning process has taught him even more about a band he loves, Lowrey said.

“I really nerded-out on a lot of their music,” he said. “It’s lofty, but accessible. You don’t even think about how complex it is because it flows so easily. Little of it is divisible by four or eight.

“Like ‘Reckoner’ on ‘In Rainbows.’ Rick helped me figure that out. It’s written in these five-bar phrases. It seems like the song is always restarting in different places. It’s not like most Western music, written in 12 bars, like Elvis did. And they play lots of little tricks with the form, like the way the bass player might add a subtle reharmonizing the sixth time out of seven. A lot of the beauty is in the details.”

He admitted he is wondering how some of those details will come across in the RecordBar, one of the city’s premier rock clubs.

“Some people may be disappointed because the music won’t rock like they want it to,” he said. “It’s going to be more chilled. It’s not exactly Radiohead unplugged, but it’s definitely more organic than the original material. If we get a full RecordBar and there’s a string quartet playing — it can be a fine line in a rock club.”

He expects some people won’t navigate that fine line and may not appreciate what he and his band have accomplished. But he’s ready for that and is focused on the real responsibility: to do it all well.

“I hope people keep an open mind about it,” he said. “I think the die-hard fans, if they don’t listen to a lot of jazz or classical music, they may not appreciate it.

“I hope no one thinks it’s an abomination, but I know we’re not going to sell everyone on it. Our basic responsibility is to not suck. That’s always the goal, but it feels like this time it’s even more important.”

friday
“Mark Lowrey Presents: Radiohead Tribute” begins at 10 p.m. at the RecordBar, 1020 Westport Road. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door.

Mark Lowrey vs. Hip-hop

Hip hop and live instrumentation are like the peanut butter and chocolate of the music world. Put ’em together and you get magic.

Remember when LL Cool J performed “Mama Said Knock You Out” on MTV’s “Unplugged”? Or when Danger Mouse mashed up The Beatles’ The White Album with Jay Z’s The Black Album to make The Grey Album?

At 10 p.m. Friday, jazz pianist Mark Lowrey teams up with local drummers and emcees to make a little magic of his own at the Czar Bar, 1531 Grand Blvd. Though the show’s billed as Mark Lowrey vs. Hip-hop, it’s more of a collaboration than a competition.

On the skins: Brandon Draper of Quixotic and Organic Proof, Zack Albetta of Trio ALL, and Giuliano Mingucci of the Barclay Martin Ensemble.

On the mic: Kartoon, Les Izmore of Hearts of Darkness, Vertigone and Swayzorbladez.

“There will be no rehearsal or preconceived structure,” Lowrey said.

Cover costs $5 and — according to Lowrey — “ass shaking is encouraged.”

— sarah benson { ink }

Shay Estes & Trio ALL
Despite Your Destination

Shay Estes & Trio ALL’s frothy new delight of a debut record, Despite Your Destination, applies the jazz-combo treatment to a variety of standards we all know by heart. It’s the right way to revisit these popular songs: familiarly soothing on one hand, but packing enough new twists to keep the listener interested and engaged from the first cut to the last.

The Kansas City group’s debut doesn’t sound tentative in any regard. In fact, it’s easy to imagine these four musicians have been together for ages, so relaxed and in a groove their playing can be.

Estes keeps her singing smooth and restrained throughout the album, wisely adhering to Michael Feinstein’s dictate that it’s practically impossible to under-sing this type of repertoire. Her voice often recalls the easy, conversational diction and tone popular among ’40s songstresses — direct, soulful, girly and pretty, but not plain.

The three men making up Trio ALL are hardly slouches, either. Pianist Mark Lowrey and bassist Ben Leifer share a remarkably symbiotic relationship, sometimes sounding like a single, four-handed player. Drummer Zack Albetta follows Estes’ lead of letting the performance serve the song, not call attention to itself — though he’s certainly up to a little solo here or filigreed fill there.

The model for Despite Your Destination becomes clear from the outset, with a brisk “Where You At” leading into “Little Drop of Poison,” which takes on a Latin accent.

“Hello, Young Lovers” turns the “King and I” show tune ballad’s usual tempo and rhythm on its ear, skipping along briskly with a rollicking piano performance matching a subtly racing drum line.

“The Night We Called It a Day” is slow and torchy, while “’Round Midnight” gets a refreshing, spare and upbeat arrangement full of drumstick ticks and tocks.

Estes turns Gershwin’s “But Not for Me” into “But Not for You,” transforming a weepy lament into a gleeful kiss-off to a former lover. The lyric, “Although I can’t dismiss/The memory of his kiss/I guess he’s not for me” becomes “I hope you can’t dismiss/The memory of my kiss/Although you’re not for me.” It’s a very clever recast, giving an appropriately 2009 attitude update to a song written nearly 80 years ago.

The album contains plenty of other bull’s-eyes. “Across the Universe” is a gloriously free-form jumble, a rattling meditation on The Beatles’ oft-covered singsong catalog staple. Arthur Hamilton’s “Cry Me a River” gets the speed treatment, with Lowrey’s nifty, dissonant piano sneaking up from the low end and counterbalancing against Albetta’s sputtering snares.

The biggest impression comes from a song that’s achieved classic status only in recent years: Shay and Trio stretch out the melody of The Church’s hypnotic “Under the Milky Way” into a country-tinged ballad that stands fittingly alongside every other tune on the album.

One of Estes’ nicest touches is her resistance to showy displays of vibrato. Many (most?) performers would jump on the long, drawn-out finale to Jimmy Rowles’ “A Timeless Place (The Peacocks)” as an invitation to ostentation, but Estes lets it end simply and surely, in keeping with her pace on the rest of the track. Good decision, at least on record — though it would likely be fun to hear her tear it up live.

Shay Estes and Trio ALL have created a new take on a clutch of songs audiences might think are played about as far out as they can go. Despite Your Destination’s effortless jazz updates couldn’t possibly be a more enjoyable listen.