Jacob Chung is a fresh face on Toronto’s jazz scene who is well-positioned to make his mark for decades to come. He’s a tenor saxophonist who turns 22 years old this year and already demonstrates a veteran understanding of post-war jazz tradition.
Epistle is Chung’s impending debut, and the first thing notable about it is that in spite of his devotion to the music of Charlie Parker and all things be-bop, he didn’t load up this record with bop standards. Instead, he created new ones, six new tunes all by him, that also perceptively touches on post-bop and hard-bop.
Chung put together a quintet of like-minded hotshots to make Epistle full of names you probably haven’t heard of yet but might want to keep track of: Christian Antonacci (trumpet), Felix Fox-Pappas (piano), Thomas Hainbuch (bass) and Petros Anagnostakos (drums).
“Bouncin’ at Bonafide” is the second of these half dozen tracks, brought to life in the video premiering above. It’s set far away from the dark, smoky environs on a bar on 52nd Street in the ’40s, where it’s outside in the sun on what looks like the roof of a building and performed by twenty-first century guys in their early 20s. And yet, the music and that exhilarating vibe it brings is all the same. Chung wrote a tune that is remindful of Parker’s “Confirmation” and is every bit as exuberant.
By vividly recreating jazz’s past, Jacob Chung and his colleagues are making jazz’s future look bright. Epistle will be released worldwide on Friday, June 24th 2022 via Three Pines Records.
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