Matt Smiley - Quartet Art

Creative grooves mix with a blending of intense saxophone and coloristic trumpet to make up bassist and composer Matt Smiley’s debut album, Quartet Art.  A jazz-influenced, improvised music album coming rhythmically out of rock and other genres to which Smiley grew up listening, Quartet Art is a journey in soundscapes, half composed and half freely improvised. 

Quartet Art was recorded in the studio at the University of Northern Colorado over two days by seasoned engineer Greg Heimbecker, who also mixed and mastered the album.  Smiley, saxophonist David Pope, trumpeter Josh Reed, and drummer/percussionist Matthew Coyle teamed up with guitarist Ryan Fourt to form a highly dynamic quintet for the first day’s recording session, while the second day’s session consisted exclusively of quartet music featuring Pope, Reed, and Coyle, under the direction of Smiley. 

The musicians on the record live all over the country – in Colorado, Virginia, and New York – and have played together in various configurations for the past seven years.  Coyle, Pope and Smiley, for instance, played in a jazz standards trio while in Virginia.  The extensive performance resume of each musician, combined with the group’s history of collaboration, gave Quartet Art’s recording sessions a vibrant, inspired energy that will be immediately noticed by the album’s listeners. 

The album Quartet Art runs the gamut between soft ballads such as Stars Fill the Sky and Eihwaz, energetic tunes like Skeed and Hagalaz, or sonic adventures like the title track Quartet Art and Charlie Haden’s Song for Che, the sole track not written by Smiley

Retaining a continuity that is both familiar and entirely new, the album’s diverse musical material has something for everyone.  Quartet Art will take the listener’s ear and mind on a voyage into the world of sound that is Matt Smiley.