Trumpet player Ethan Chilton is a fresh face on the West Coast jazz scene who is already achieving the kind of music I wouldn’t expect from someone just a few years out of high school. Having recently earned a Mater’s music degree at the University of California’s Thornton School of Music, he’s just put out a new album that showcases a lot of what he’s already capable of doing as a composer, leader and musician with his sweeping, thorough solar system-themed work, The Planets.
There’s a track from this album worth further investigation, a funky little fusion number called “Caldera.”
“Caldera” is an outlier track on an album where every track is an outlier track. The styles presented range from orchestral jazz to small, intimate settings with every mood and ensemble size in-between. The element that ties them together aside from Chilton’s trumpet is his advanced, thoughtful composing style. A Chilton song never sits still, nor is content with simple riffs or repeating figures; the harmony is always going forward. Classical stylings are thrown together with contemporary influences and Chilton somehow makes it all cohere.
That’s all certainly true of “Caldera,” where for this song only, Chilton leads a band comprised of Nicole McCabe (alto sax), Michael Orenstein (keyboards), Teis Semey (guitar), Logan Kane (bass), Ben Ring (drums) and Jon Hatamiya on trombone. Ring’s snare gets a good groove going and it’s not long before the theme of this song is revealed, which has a lot of bop components with Chilton, McCabe and Hatamiya leading the way.
The middle section between McCabe’s and Chilton’s showcases is where Chilton really puts in the work on composing and arranging. That’s where there’s a tangled transition involving that horn trio that swings like Basie with a modern funk sensibility. Chilton and Hatamiya later engage in some spirited brass sparring for the final bit of blowing before the end.
And this is just one track. The other eight cuts have their own stories to tell.
Go get Ethan Chilton’s The Planets now from Bandcamp.
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