NEWS - Listening is forgetting the name of the sound one hears.
10/2024 we had a fantastic European tour with my AlmostAllStarsBand, with the "Joe Hertenstein Trio feat. Michael Moore & Michael Formanek plus special guest Ray Anderson",12 gigs in 13 days through Germany, Austria, Belgium, Norway, Italy.
The great Polish label Fundacja Sluchaj will release the album "The 7th Dinner LIVE” on October 6th 2025 - stay tuned!
10/2023 after a great concert at the 60th jazzwerkstatt festival in Peitz last month, the legendary Ray Anderson suggested a quartet: "Joe Hertenstein feat. Michael Moore & Michael Formanek plus special guest Ray Anderson"
- Ralph Gluch immediately began offering the quartet to premier in October 2024, please reach out if you are interested in presenting this band: ralph@gluch.ch
Awesome drawing by @rolfschroeter of our quartet concert July 2023 at Kühlspot, Berlin, with Alexander von Schlippenbach, Matthias Bauer, Danny Kamins and yours truly.
01/2023 What a way to start the new year: My latest album "Joe Hertenstein Trio LIVE DURING LOCKDOWN feat. Greg Cohen & Michael Moore" released on jazzwerkstatt Berlin was awarded "BEST LIVE ALBUM 2022" by The New York City Jazz Record 01/2023. The trio is available for February 2024, please reach out, click on pic below:
On September 6th we'll perform at Schlot in Berlin, on the 9th at Jazzwerkstatt-Festival Peitz60 with bassist Antonio Borghini:
Joe Hertenstein Trio feat. Michael Moore.
3/30/2022 "Live During Lockdown feat. Greg Cohen & Michael Moore" is now released on jazzwerkstatt Berlin-Brandenburg with support of the Cultural Senate of Berlin.
11/04 Meinrad Kneer called in a recording session at Berlin Audio with Italian guitar wizard Andrea Massaria from Trieste - that was instant connection, great new trio, gonna be a real nice album!
10/22 Stephen Gauci called in a recording session at Berlin's
Keller4 Studios for a recording with bassist Jan Roder and the legend
himself, Alexander von Schlippenbach - full circle for me, incredible! I even engineered this session.
5/21 Stephen Gauci called in a recording session at Scholes Street Studio with Sandy Ewen and Thomas Helton - that was fun!
Berlin, I'm in you!
3/21 My brand new trio LOCKDOWN with Michael Moore on reeds and Greg Cohen on bass performed as part of an art & sound installation by Chris Hinze on March 16th at Kesselhaus, Kulturbrauerei, Berlin, to a sold out audience. The music got recorded, although this was not a concert: "Live During Lockdown!"
HFH - Thomas Heberer, Joe Fonda and myself developed a repertoire during the summer-of-2020-lockdown in NYC and recorded at the end of August last year at Tedesco's in New Jersey. The music drives super hard, Jon Rosenberg's mix and master sound amazing, the awesome Polish label Fundacja Słuchaj just released it 4/2021: REMEDY!
Robert Musso released our trio album "The Grumbler" with Mark Daterman in July of 2020 on his label muworks: Two guitars and table percussion, very unique music. Muworks predominantly features Cecil-Taylor-alumni percussion legends Pheeroan akLaff and Jackson Krall.
Sean Sonderegger's Magically Inclined's second album "Living There" - out September 18 2020 on SKIRL and META Records with Kamala Sankaram, Curtis Fowlkes, Harvey Valdes, Shawn Lovato, Pheeroan akLaff, and myself.
The Belgian label OFF-Records is released "Orientation of We - EMERGENCE" with Michael Irwin, James Brandon Lewis, Max Johnson and myself in September of 2020.
9/2019, my first time recording with Jason LaFarge at Seizure's Palace in Gowanus, Brooklyn, with tenor saxophonist Lior Milliger's trio with bass legend Hilliard Greene. Listening to the rough mix right now, the music was captured incredibly by Jason and this will be an album of all-knives-out Freejazz in best Charles-Gayle-tradition. Greene played with Gayle for years. Gayle's albums Streets and Touching On Trane were highly influencial for Lior and myself. Streets was actually recorded here at Seizure's Palace by Jason! The trio communication was lit and we all left our butts at the studio ;-) My second recording session with my brand new BOSPHORUS cymbals and I'm loving them mercilessly!
8/2019, last night TheTimHagansQuintet played a beautiful concert at JazzAtLincolnCenter's Dizzy'sClub feat. Jon Irabagon, Leo Genovese and Jay Anderson. Tim's compositions are incredible and incredibly fun to play and this band is on fire. I had a particularly good time, since this was also my first gig playing my brand new BOSPHORUS cymbals. They sound, feel and look amazing! I'm over the moon being their latest endorser!
07/2019, we had a great day at Tedesco Studios in New Jersey recording with the Michael Eaton/Sean Sonderegger Quartet 8 Bit Aesthetic with Shawn Lovato on bass. Everybody was on fire! The ruffs sound incredible, can't wait to hear the master! It'll be released soon on SKIRL Records! JAZZ!
07/2019, incredible two-day recording session at Martin Bisi's legendary BCStudios in Gowanus, Brooklyn, with Sana Nagano's band SmashingHumans with Peter Apfelbaum, Keisuke Matsuno and Ken Filiano. Sana's music rocks so hard, and what a band she put together! Martin's editing/mixing work, the sequenzing, the mastering by Fred Kevorkian, all sounds incredible, the artwork is through the roof, LP/CD out on 577Records, March 2021... a wild album! Can't wait to tour Japan!
Massive love to the guru Master Graves!
Incredible to meet Gary Bartz!
shared the drumkit with Thomas Pridgen at Club77 in SanJuan, PuertoRico, big jam 'n' hang with Spacepilot & the Residente family!
Germans in NY - with Peter Broetzmann, Vision Festival 2019
Drummers united with brothers Francisco Mela & Hamid Drake, Vision Festival 2019, celebrating Andrew Cyrille!
Andrew Cyrille & Milford Graves at VisionFestival 2019, NY
with Kenny Wollesen & Gabriel Gordon
with Tony Mason
with Shahzad Ismaily, Michael Vatcher & Briggan Krauss
with Rakalam Bob Moses
with Bill Laswell & Peter Apfelbaum
with Tommy Baldu
SPACEPILOT with Elias Meister & Leo Genovese and guests DJ Illvibe & Sebastian Studnitzky at Xjazz Festival 2019, Berlin, Fluxbau.
On Saturday, February 9th 2019, I was the guest on Dave Sewelson's new show "Music For a Free World" on WFMU's "Give the Drummer" Radio LIVE Audio Stream. Dave and I first met at Steven Gauci's "Bushwick Improvised Music Series", when we had a double bill where he performed with his quartet with Steve Swell, William Parker and Marvin Bugalo Smith. Check out their beautiful album "Music for a Free World" via this link on bandcamp.
I immediately wanted to get to know this man with the epic white beard and his incredible baritone sax playing. A few weeks later, we played a set at the same series in quartet with Ras Moshe and Dan Clucas, who was in town: Three horns and my tabel-percussion-kit-hybrid: Fun! You can watch the set here.
Now Dave begun his own weekly radio show, Saturdays from 2-5pm, interviewing a different guest every time. I joined the show at minute 39. It was my honor being only his third guest after William Parker and Mara Rosenbloom, and being the first drummer. Talking to Dave is a pleasure and I'm very grateful that he gave me an opportunity to present some of my music. We played music from eight CDs, chatted in between, and played two duo mini-sets of improvised music together. Also the view was quite inspiring. Thank you, Dave!!
You can listen to the archived stream of this and all his past shows via: http://wfmu.org/playlists/FI
Feb2019 Now, that was fun! Aaron Bielish from Houston commissioned me to put two ensembles together to use his paintings as graphic scores for improvisors: EYEmusic. This was a perfect opportunity for me to put my Stone-Table-Percussion-Kit-Hybrid to full effect and invite some of my favorite musicians to play: One set with a string trio and one with an electronics duo. Both performances were recorded multi-track by multi-Grammy winning engineer/producer Diko Shoturma at ShapeshifterLab in Brooklyn, as well as filmed in 4k...stay tuned for a release!
Jeff Morris and I met 2015 as artists in residence at The Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida, where Karl Berger was the master artist. Together we developed an idea around Jeff's electronic work and spent three September days in Woodstock at Karl's studio and recorded a trio album of vibes & piano, drum kit & stone table percussion, and electronics & sound processing to be released on Rovello Records (PARMA/Naxos) October 12th 2018 - very exciting!
The album's name is INTERFACES and here you can listen to the teaser:
Wow, full circle today, Jan15th: After moving to New York in 2007, one of my first big shows I saw here in March was Cecil Taylor with Henry Grimes and Pheeroan Aklaff at Lincoln Center/Rose Theater and during their set I remember being simultaneously tied to and jumping in my seat. Telling folks about this concert is one of my favorite NY stories. Today, 11 years later, I not only got to finally meet Pheeroan, but we recorded double drums for Sean Sonderegger’s new album with Curtis Fowlkes, Kamala Sankaram, Harvey Valdes and Shawn Lovato at Tedesco studios. Thanks, Sean!
Pheeroan looks great! My pic feat. crazy studio headphones hair.
Ivo Perelman Makes It Rain in "allaboutjazz.com"
Nov 12, 2017
Ivo Perelman / Matthew Shipp / Joe Hertenstein
Scalene
Leo Records
2017
"The Perelman/Shipp trio is completed once again by a new name, Joe Hertenstein. Where the saxophonist's most recent discs have relied upon the established pulse of Gerald Cleaver or Whit Dickey, he has expanded his universe to include drummers Andrew Cyrille on Dione (2017), Bobby Kapp on Tarvos (2017) and Heptagon (see below), and Jeff Cosgrove (see above). This studio date evolved from Shipp's two recordings with Hertenstein and The Core Trio released on FreeBass Productions (2014) and Evil Rabbit Records (2016).
The music is, of course, all spontaneous, and it once again is influenced by the newest member. Hertenstein is more rock than roll here, an approach not heard with his trio HNH (with Pascal Niggenkemper and Thomas Heberer). Let's say he lit the candle in the midst of these two heavyweight improvisors to earn his bones. In any case, the recording is a carbonated affair. As Perelman is quoted in the liner notes, "he plays symphonic music, he plays jazz; he plays things that don't make sense." Like Paal Nilssen-Love, Hertenstein is a proponent of the aggressive rattle and bang. He turns the opening "Part 1" inside-out, inciting Shipp's thunderous march and Perelman's upper register gymnastics. Even the quieter pieces, "Part 2" and "Part 6" are busy affairs, swarming with cymbal and clink. This new trio alliance communicated great promise for things to come."
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/ivo-perelman-makes-it-rain-by-mark-corroto.php
- "After Effects" Best-of-2017 by Avant-Music-News
- also on Free Jazz Blog's 2017-Top-10-List by Rick Joines
From review on
http://www.freejazzblog.org/2017/09/danny-kamins-damon-smith-alvin-fielder.html
"In the track, “Land, Sand, Water,” Fielder and Hertenstein sprinkle and grind their percussives like sand accreting and eroding at the water’s edge. One’s tempestuous imagination continues to roam over the rest of the album, lulled by Smith’s louré bowing in “The Gentle Breeze,” buoyed and battered by the Doppler effects of Fielder and Hertenstein’s bells and skins in “The Wind,” attentive to Kamins’ lyrical, wavering foghorning in “The Shore,” and magnetized by Smith’s scratch tones and rhythmic walking during “The Hurricane and the Calms.” In “After Effects,” each instrument sounds as if it’s been through the worst of it and is piecing itself back together uncertainly, anxiously assessing the damage in the final song, “The Cleanup.” > www.fmr-records.com
Danny Kamins' "After Effects" with Damon Smith and AACM-legend Alvin Fielder on FMR
2017
In June 2017 I recorded an album for French/Algerian singer/songwriter OURIDA with Jonathan Levy on bass and different guests at Figure8Studios in Brooklyn with Eli Crews - gonna be beautiful!