Fire in the West

A long-time fan of the front-line pairings of the 1950s bands of Miles Davis, Art Blakey and Horace Silver (for whom "Silver Mine" is dedicated), Swainson shaped both his compositions and the blue-chip rhythm section of pianist Renee Rosnes (with whom he'd worked in the 1990s cross border band Free Trade) and Lewis Nash around this stylistic post-bop conception. With compositional dedications to musical influences (the aforementioned "Silver Mine"), to impactful places ("Kyushu," a musical reflection of time spent on this Japanese island), to people ("Fell Among Thieves" references a biblical parable that Swainson relates to some "wonderful" people he has known who fell into difficult company and circumstance), this new recording offers a personal glimpse inside Swainson's musical and compositional mind.