24th February 2015: Matthew Stevens, ‘Woodwork’ now available exclusively from iTunes (Editor’s Choice Feature) ahead of May release, ft Gerald Clayton, Vicente Archer, Eric Doob, Paulo Stagnaro.

Last week we announced the debut album Woodwork from guitarist and composer Matthew Stevens and an exclusive offer from iTunes.

From today the album is available exclusively from iTunes worldwide until the first street date of May 26, 2015, and is currently featured as ‘Editor’s Choice’.  No matter your locale, Click here to Order  and you’ll be taken to your country’s iTunes store.

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ABOUT WOODWORK:

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NYC-based guitarist and composer Matthew Stevens is heralded as one of the most promising young artists in contemporary jazz music through his associations with NEXT Collective, Christian Scott, Esperanza Spalding, Terri Lyne Carrington, Walter Smith III, and Harvey Mason. Now Stevens comes fully into his own with his debut recording as a leader, Woodwork. The album showcases Stevens’ diverse influences, his warm, robust sound, and his fluid, emotive playing at the helm of a stellar quintet which features multiple Grammy-nominated pianist Gerald Clayton, bassist Vicente Archer, drummer Eric Doob and percussionist Paulo Stagnaro.

The album’s title, Stevens says, reflects the almost tactile way in which he creates music. “It’s a metaphor for how I see myself interacting with sound. Woodwork is an act of creation in collaboration with the natural world; it invokes a sense of being handmade or one of a kind. These raw materials exist regardless of whether or not you do something with them, so I try to respect that and let the music unfold naturally.”

Woodwork places the sound of Stevens’ guitar front and center, achieving a full-bodied resonance that captures the immersive feeling of a live concert experience. “When you listen to a saxophone or a trumpet, you often feel like you’re right there in the room with no buffer,” Stevens explains. “There’s a real sense of immediacy when you hear them on record, and I miss that on the guitar. As a guitarist, your touch and articulation contribute hugely to your identity as an instrumentalist, so if you have none of that air in the sound you lose a lot of nuance. I put a microphone in front of my guitar as well as the amp so it didn’t just feel in your face, but like the music was alive and moving around in the room.”

A self-described guitar fanatic who fell in love with his father’s Jimi Hendrix records as a child and never looked back, Stevens purposely assembled his band to allow the guitar to express his melodies alone. His strings shimmer over percussive interplay on opener “Ashes One,” then weave a hypnotic groove on “Star L.A;” they sing the folk-inspired melody of the title track and roar on the album’s driving composition, “Uptown Dance Party.” The elusive “Sunday” continues the genre-bridging mission of the NEXT Collective with a haunting David Bowie cover, while “Blasted” pays homage to Wayne Shorter with its churning, circular melody. Stevens was recently invited by musical director Terri Lyne Carrington to perform at a fundraiser for the upcoming documentary Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity alongside an all-star lineup including Shorter, Hancock, Spalding, Marcus Miller, Lalah Hathaway,Corrine Bailey Rae, Lizz Wright and Dee Dee Bridgewater.

Stevens possesses a rare ability to marry singable melodies with cerebral complexity, as on the tense, shifting “Sequel” or the knotty “Grown Ups.” A through-composed duo for guitar and piano, “Gently” mesmerizingly interlaces Stevens’ and Clayton’s expressive lines. “Brothers,” performed as a trio with Archer and Doob, embraces the sound of the acoustic guitar from the blossoming resonance to the scrape of fingers on strings. And this was no ordinary acoustic guitar; much of the album was recorded at the Clubhouse Studio in Rhinebeck, New York, which just happens to own an early-70s Lowden formerly played by late folk legend Pete Seeger. It was that axe that Stevens reverently wielded for this song. “Collectively we were each able to tap into what we all think is important musically,” Stevens says. “In my own experience there’s nothing that feels more exciting than that.”