Dan Pitt is a guitarist, composer and improviser based in Toronto with a focus on improvised music ranging from a multitude of genres such as jazz, folk, rock, pop and contemporary music. Horizontal Depths is an album based on a theoretical premise that ends up sounding smooth and natural, real beautiful. Pitt studied with Phil Nimmons, who steered his protégé beyond vertical, harmony-centric orientation and more toward the dynamic interplay of individual lines. Harmony is considered ‘’vertical’’, and lines are ‘’horizontal’’. The result is music that feels free-flowing and aerial, but still tonally anchored by Pitt and his musicians’ communicative feeling. Here is not a demonstration of intellectual academia incarnated in sound-making. It is naturally felt and spontaneously created (with a little help from writing general canvases) music of the jazz idiom, but informed, also, by some contemporary chamber esthetic, post-minimalism and pop easiness of character. Some hard rock explosions appear here and there, as a few free jazz and abstract contemporary flowerings also, giving the whole of the program the spicy finishing touch that prevents it from being too placid.
This is very nice stuff, and highly recommended listening.
Naomi McCarroll-Butler – Alto Saxophone and Bass Clarinet
Patrick Smith – Tenor Saxophone
Dan Pitt – Electric Guitar and Compositions
Alex Fournier – Double Bass
Nick Fraser – Drums and Cymbals
