Jason Lindner: Breeding Ground
Breeding Ground combines the two most successful projects of New York-bred pianist Jason Lindner: Now Vs. Now, his propulsive groove trio with bassist Panagiotis Andreou and drummer Mark Guiliana; and his big band, which started at the Greenwich Village basement club Smalls twenty years ago.
Jason Lindner and Breeding Ground drummer Mark Guiliana worked with the late David Bowie on Blackstar, along with saxophonist Donny McCaslin, guitarist Ben Monder and bassist Tim Lefebrve.
“Jason [Lindner] was a godsend,” says producer Tony Visconti in a recent interview. “We gave him some pretty far-out chords, but he brought a jazz sensibility to re-voice them…Jason’s synthesizer didn’t have a computer with souped-up programs like Omnisphere on it. He would just do it with guitar pedals, making all the sounds unique.”
Created in 2009 by a commission from the Jazz Gallery and the Jerome Foundation, the 11-piece Breeding Ground ensemble finds Andreou and Guiliana in the engine room, with Lindner on more piano than synths, leaving room for a string section, a horn section, and singer-songwriter Jeff Taylor as the featured vocalist.
Electro-acoustic, poly-rhythmic, cross-pollinated, dirty and mixed up, improvised and composed, multi-formatted and ever shifting, Breeding Ground is the epitome of liquid modernity. Their debut full-length album will be released in 2016.