Blog: Darcy James Argue's Secret Society

It's coming… Release date: April 30, 2013 on New Amsterdam Records Shows: April 20, 2013 — BAMcafé Live , Brooklyn (FREE) May 18, 2013 — Atlas Arts Center , Washington DC ( tickets ) more dates coming soon… We've released a preview track, "The Neighborhood" (featuring John Ellis on tenor sax). Listen here . Additional details here .

It tastes like Pine-Sol, but pleasantly so. I'm off to Copenhagen to spend a week working with the celebrated Danish Radio Big Band . Long one of the preeminent European radio bigbands, this is the ensemble of which Thad Jones assumed the helm when he relocated to Denmark in the late 1970's. It's since been led by Brookmeyer and McNeely, among notable others. Clearly it's a massive honor for me to be afforded the opportunity to rehearse and perform with these great musicians, and I'm very much looking forward to our concert on Friday [...]

SECRET SOCIETY @ THE JAZZ GALLERY 290 Hudson St., New York NY Sets at 9:00 PM & 10:30 PM (both nights) Photo: Lindsay Beyerstein The Jazz Gallery  is one of the greatest places to hear music in the entire world. Anyone who's ever seen a show there knows this. I've seen master [...]

Vintage synths, wrecked by Sandy New Amsterdam Records , home to Secret Society, our co-conspirator Sam Sadigursky , and many, many friends and kindred spirits on the New York music scene, has suffered a devastating loss. Their new headquarters, located at 98 Van Dyke Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn -- just 300 feet from the waterfront -- was innundated by the storm surge from Hurricane Sandy. This converted industrial location/biker hangout(!) was what you might call a fixer-upper, and renovating the space was genuine labor of love for the [...]

Photo by Erin Patrice O’Brien This Friday night (Oct. 19) at Symphony Space , we're trying something new. I've handed the keys to my music over to a designated driver: Pedro Giraudo . One the most distressingly common questions I get asked by presenters is: "can't you do something a bit... smaller?" I have to patiently explain that no, we really are an 18-piece band (plus me) and I really do need all of them. But I'm often tempted to unleash the [...]

"The Rite of Spring" by Jennifer Renshaw Hey, do you remember when you first heard The Rite of Spring (which, incidentally, turns 100 next year)? If you're like me, you first connected with the work as a teenager. (I did see  Fantasia as a small child but the  Rite music did not stick.) For me and many of my peers, it's the first piece of classical music we got genuinely excited about. I'm interested in hearing from the current crop of [...]

Ecstatic Summer — River To River Festival World Financial Center Plaza 250 Vesey Street, New York, NY 7:00 PM FREE Details. Featuring special guest soloist Tim Hagans  with Secret Society: WINDS Erica von Kleist Rob Wilkerson Sam Sadigurksy Frank Fontaine Josh [...]

Was disco the last musical genre that absolutely everyone had to get in on? It wasn't just the likes of  Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones and Wings-era Paul McCartney and the Greatful Dead and Kiss … a surprising number of major jazz artists also made disco-inflected records. There's Ron Carter's 1976 Pastels , which opens with the glossy string-sweetened " Woolaphant ." Also in '76, Dizzy Gillespie put out a record called  Dizzy's Party — here's the title track . Sonny Rollins even [...]

Photo: Erik Jacobs for NPR Audio from Secret Society's set at the Newport Jazz Festival is streamable and downloadable here, courtesy NPR. There are also sets from many of the other amazing groups that played the festival, including Dafnis Prieto, Miguel Zénon, The Bad Plus with Bill Frisell, Ryan Truesdell's Gil Evans Centennial Project, and more — the programming at Newport really is an embarassment of riches. Many hours of tremendous music-making await you here . Jon Garelick has a Newport write-up in the [...]

Secret Society returns to the Newport Jazz Festival tomorrow (Saturday, Aug. 4) — we play the Fort Stage at 2:20 PM. Looking forward to seeing you there! I'll be available after the show to sign CDs and/or general chitchat, or like if you want to buy me a lobster roll or something. And for those of you not able to attend in person, there will be a live video feed broadcast on the inter-webs, courtesy of the National Public Radio . Our Newport co-conspirators include: WINDS Erica vonKleist Rob Wilkerson Sam [...]

2012 DownBeat Critics' Poll — Rising Star: Big Band

Photo: Scott MacLeod And now, as we prepare to go into the studio tomorrow morning, we are pleased to bring you the exciting conclusion our daily profiles of the musicians involved in the making of the  Brooklyn Babylon  recording. Your final co-conspirator is trumpeter Ingrid Jensen . Selected by DownBeat as one of the “25 most important improvising musicians of the future,” Ingrid has garnered an impressive reputation as a trumpet-player, composer, bandleader and educator. She divides her time throughout the year, touring and recording [...]

Photo: Lindsay Beyerstein We continue our daily profiles of the musicians involved in the making of the Brooklyn Babylon recording with a look at bass trombonist and tubaist Jennifer Wharton . Jen has performed and recorded with many top-flight jazz ensembles including the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band , Alan Ferber's Extended Ensemble, the Ayn Inserto Jazz Orchestra , Jeff Fairbanks' Project Hansori , and the DIVA Jazz Orchestra . She can been heard in the current TONY-award winning Broadway production [...]

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Photo: Justin Ray We continue our daily profiles of the musicians involved in the making of the Brooklyn Babylon recording with a look at saxophonist, flutist, and clarinetist Rob Wilkerson  ( @wilkersonmusic on Twitter).  Rob balances his time between touring the world with a certain famous Canadian singer and heartthrob 1  with a busy performing schedule as a sideman in New York. He performs regularly with many of the city's finest large ensembles, including the Alan Ferber Big Band, and the BMI New York Jazz [...]

Photo: Jin Zhao We continue our daily profiles of the musicians involved in the making of the Brooklyn Babylon recording with a look at guitarist Sebastian Noelle . Seb has been active in New York City since 2002. As a leader, he has released two albums on Fresh Sound: Across The River , with Donny McCaslin , Ben Street , and Ari Hoenig ; and Koan , with Loren Stillman , George Colligan , [...]

Photo: Jon Wikan We continue our daily profiles of the musicians involved in the making of the Brooklyn Babylon recording with a look at lead trumpeter Seneca Black. Seneca grew up in the unicorportated community of Lake Ariel, Pennsylvania . As a teenager, he met Wynton Marsalis at a workshop, and thanks in part to Wynton's encouragement, he ended up moving to New York and enrolling at the Manhattan School of Music. After a year at MSM, at age 18 he was invited to join the Jazz at Lincoln [...]

Photo: Joanne Levey We continue our daily profiles of the musicians involved in the making of the Brooklyn Babylon recording with a look at saxophonist and flutist Erica von Kleist . Erica has made her mark as one of the most in-demand young musicians in New York, performing and recording with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra , Chris Potter , Sean Jones , and Nicholas Payton . She was named a Rising Star on flute in the  DownBeat Critics' Poll, and has [...]

We continue our daily profiles of the musicians involved in the making of the Brooklyn Babylon recording with a look at bassist Matt Clohesy . Matt left his hometown of Melbourne to come to New York in 2001. He's since gained much recognition as an acoustic and electric bassist worldwide, having toured and recorded with artists like Kurt Rosenwinkel , Seamus Blake ,  Eric Reed , and  Geoffrey Keezer . In the pop world, he has performed with Grammy winner Colbie Caillat and the Chris Bergson Band . He continues to work with many [...]

  Photo: Lindsay Beyerstein We continue our daily profiles of the musicians involved in the making of the Brooklyn Babylon recording with a look at trumpeter  Tom Goehring . Tom  has performed in the New York area for over 20 years, with progressive big bands like J.C. Sanford’s Sound Assembly , Sherisse Rogers' Project Uprising , the Andrew Rathbun Large Ensemble , and the Noriko Ueda Jazz Orchestra , [...]