Sesshin CD

John D'earth, Members of Old School Freight Train, Agents of Good Roots, Modern Groove Syndicate, and Fair Weather Bums join Charlottesville based drummer James McLaughlin to create this unique instrumental jazz album. This project was mixed and mastered by Chapman Stick master Greg Howard in May, 2005 and released on Mountainside Records."The first disk I stumbled upon is a magical offering I feel privileged to be one of the first to hear. Sesshin is pure down-tempo ecstasy. Produced entirely by James McLaughlin at his Mountainside Studios, Sesshin is the best takes from endless jam sessions there. While Sesshin is smooth, and it is jazz, I hesitate to call it "smooth jazz," the overproduced, reverb-heavy, synthetic drumming garbage played late at night on most public radio stations. Sesshin is smooth in the classic, dark-speakeasy, cigarette-in-mouth, too-cool-for-school way. McLaughlin plays the drums, laying down the backbeat for some of the town's finest youngsters and veterans. Jesse Harper (guitar), Darrell Muller (bass), and Daniel Clarke (keyboards) are the backbone. Guests include JC Kuhl on sax and John D'earth on trumpet. Special kudos to Andy Thacker, who shows how to work a mandolin into the music the one and only way it should be done. Sesshin is a one-time offering showcasing the wide range of Charlottesville's musical talent. They have a gig scheduled for next month at the Gravity Lounge. I suggest that you do not miss the show."Damani Harrison, The Hook, 6.30.05McLaughlin's all star Sesshin spans musical genresBy Jedd FerrisDaily Progress correspondentFriday, July 8, 2005Since moving to town three years ago, local drummer, producer and engineer James McLaughlin has had a chance to play with some of Charlottesville's best musicians, so earlier this year, he decided to get them all under one roof to record a super jam session. Enlisting a who's who from a wide range of genres from traditional jazz to bluegrass to roots rock to funk, McLaughlin opened his Mountain Records studio to create "Sesshin," a new album that blends a creative twist of styles and offers a time capsule concoction of Central Virginia's home grown music scene. "I wanted to get the best possible people and give them a chance to do something different that they might not normally do," says McLaughlin "The idea musically was to combine the instrumental jazz background that I have with some of the more acoustic, folk flavors of the area in Charlottesville." The nine tracks for the album started with the foundation of McLaughlin on drums along with Old School Freight Train's Darrell Muller on bass and Jesse Harper making a rare showcase of electric guitar. Flavors were then added from different ends of the spectrum; the brass highlights of longstanding legend John D'earth on trumpet and J.C. Kuhl, formerly of Agents of Good Roots, on saxophone, the range of keyboard gadabout Daniel Clarke and the string touches of another Freight Train member, Ben Krakauer, on banjo, alongside award-winning picker Andy Thacker on mandolin and skilled fiddler Anne-Marie Calhoun. The entire cast of the "Sesshin" record will perform at a CD release party at the Gravity Lounge on Thursday night. "Everybody that is on the album is working with some other band, so this might be the only time I get this actual cast together," McLaughlin said. "Gigs in the future will most likely just be pieces of it, but with the name Sesshin it can be flexible with a lot of the musicians from around town. I think we can make this a regular thing." While the album tracks are developed in mellow jazz arrangements, enough string surprises jump out to create a sweet cacophony (often in individual songs) that lands somewhere between dark lounge style, sonic improvisation and newgrass expansiveness. "I'll Remember You Love" and "Talk About Suffering" are old traditionals rearranged by McLaughlin into instrumentally pensive tone poems. "Sans Humanite" is a steel-pan calypso standard that was