Chris Potter tenor and soprano saxophones, clarinets, flutes, sampler, guitars, keyboards, and percussion

James Francies Keyboards

Eric Harland Drums

Linley Marthe Bass Guitar (tracks 3,4,5,and 8)

One of the most influential and inventive improvisors of his generation, Chris Potter returns with his major new album ‘Circuits’ featuring keyboardist James Francies (Blue Note), drummer Eric Harland with Linley Marthe on bass. For more than two decades, Potter’s limitless creativity, effortless virtuosity and vibrant sense of swing have wowed critics, musicians and fans who cite him as one of the most influential saxophonists and inventive improvisors of modern day.

Following three acclaimed albums on ECM, ‘Circuits’ sees Chris Potter, with a new home at Edition Records, return to groove, echoing his music from the Underground era. As Chris explains: “This is an idea that I’ve had for some time. I was kinda itching to get back into grooveland, and I was talking to Eric Harland about it. We’ve been working together for many years, and he recommended calling James Francies, who I was not familiar with, and it just immediately worked. This album feels like a turning point in musical direction for me, so it feels very fortunate to have some fresh faces involved to help support it. To me, the album has a feeling of being unconstrained by convention, so I’m happy to have some folks on the business side who feel that way too. Edition has a lot of good ideas about how to connect this recording with a potential audience that might really like it if we can just make it onto their radar, and that’s very exciting to me”.

The music is effortless, free from convention tho’ rooted in tradition, with modern sensibilities and influences. Chris continues, “It seems like the kind of thing where we could have written music, or not; it could be super-arranged, it could be not arranged. Everything just kind of works and that’s something you can’t really plan out. The chemistry’s got to be right. You can imagine everything in your head, you can write… but it’s when you begin playing, that’s when you really see where it’s at. If you think about where the music came from, starting with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, you know, everyone just used what they had around them. They wanted to play music that people would like, something that would bring in an audience, using the sounds and influences around them. So, that’s exactly what this is too. It’s just that the influences around us include hip hop and electronica and all kinds of stuff that wasn’t happening at the beginning of the history of the music. But for me, the important thing about the history of the music was the inclusiveness and the ability to change. That’s what keeps it alive.’

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