08 Jan Album: Forgotten Aspect

ALT JAZZ ARK

Corpus X Quartet

Forgotten Aspect

ALT JAZZ ARK Corpus X Quartet

Elaine Alt – Saxophones & Piano
Gaea Schell – Piano & Flute
Christopher Amberger – Bass
Greg German – Drums

Compositions by Elaine Alt

Copyright © & ℗ Elaine Alt, 2025
Aural Imaging (BMI) Original Publisher
David P Alt (BMI) Composer

Recorded May 28 & 29, 2024
at Flaming Hakama studios in San Francisco
by Elaine Alt and Garry Williams

Mixed and Mastered by Myles Boisen at
Guerrilla Recording/Headless Buddha Mastering Lab

These songs emerge from a process that started last century.

During the years 1988-1995, I composed the equivalent of 6 albums of material. This started during my final years of high school in Yorktown Hts., NY, spanned the four years I lived in Boston, MA while attending MIT, and the two subsequent years I lived in Somerville, MA.

Since then, I have produced the equivalent of 5 albums of new material, and in general have not looked back upon this early material. However, during the pandemic, I started documenting this older work, and that inspired me to take a deeper look.

I spent a year publishing all my Jazz-based songs as lead sheets, then a year conducting reading sessions to evaluate and improve the charts and the songs, and then during 2024 I launched two different quartets to learn and record material that deserved another hearing.

The Corpus X Quartet is the first of these projects to come to fruition, which explores material from albums called I. Inaugural Jazz, III. Exploring Jazz Tradition, and IV. Modern Jazz.

I. Inaugural Jazz: Forgotten Aspect – Blue Choice – Enclosure – Nuclear Waste

These are among the first songs I wrote. While the chord changes are original, the forms are inspired by standard 32-bar AABA and 12-bar blues forms, embellished with introductions, interludes, codas, and arranged trading, which are traits common to the music I devoured at the time, such as artists like Tadd Dameron, Clifford Brown, and Horace Silver.

III. Exploring Jazz Tradition: Popcorn – The End Of Bebop – Trane’s Sound

These songs explore a range of Jazz styles, including Second Line, Basie-era Swing, Bebop, and Modal. They are small-scale studies of the tenor saxophone styles of the era of Coleman Hawkins, Dexter Gordon, and John Coltrane. These compositions incorporate borrowed material and chord changes, and are somewhat of a smattering of contrafact, transcription, and historical fiction.

IV. Modern Jazz: Fade – for the death of my friends – Sambo, Sambae

Three songs are from a series based on more modern approaches, with more exotic harmonies, non-standard phase lengths, time signature changes, and rhythmic hooks. The colors and moods are inspired by the avant garde-leaning artists like Gil Evans, Eric Dolphy, and Charles Mingus.