Paul Giallorenzo's GitGO

New Album "Emergent" just released on Leo Records. CD release party 12/9/12 @ the Hungry Brain.

Mars Williams - reeds
Jeb Bishop - trombone
Paul Giallorenzo - piano
Anton Hatwich - bass
Marc Riordan - drums

Neil Tesser's top ten Chicago Jazz albums of 2009
"#4 – Paul Giallorenzo, Get In To Go Out (482 Music). ... Together, they skip back and forth across the line that separates tonal music from more freedom-loving improvisation, in ways that might have made such stylistic forbears as Charles Mingus, Jackie McLean, Paul Bley, and Eric Dolphy awfully proud. The music is inviting but edgy, impassioned but in control, and often absolutely irresistible. Giallorenzo – a co-founder of the presenting organization Elastic Arts – has actually performed with a fair amount of Chicago new-music mavens. He’s somewhat disadvantaged by the fact that piano doesn’t play as big a role in the avant-garde as it did in earlier jazz idioms; but he makes up for that here, with solos that manage to combine density with bright voicings, and a solo style that finds its way back “in” each time it gets “out.”

Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader, May 6, 2009
"... The album, recorded in 2005, features a terrific quintet--saxophonist Dave Rempis, cornetist Josh Berman, bassist Anton Hatwich, and drummer Frank Rosaly--playing nine impressive original tunes. Repeated listens have opened up my ears; Giallorenzo's key inspirations go back five decades, but the way he evokes Thelonious Monk, Herbie Nichols, and particularly early Cecil Taylor doesn't sound the last bit dated. The spry arrangements are packed with tricky zigzagging lines and tart harmonies, and a swing feel dominates, though the compositions are hardly square or retro; this pushes the front-line players toward postbop gambits we don't always hear in their own work. There's plenty of solo space for each member, but I think Giallorenzo makes the most of his time--probably because he knows the tunes more intimately. He also does a terrific job vamping and making provocative interjections behind other soloists. Not only does the local scene suffer from a shortage of pianos, it's got very few pianists playing improvised music (as opposed to straight jazz). Off the top of my head, there's Jim Baker and . . . Giallorenzo. That might help explain why I find this album so refreshing--but the biggest reason is that the music is superb."

Manny Theiner, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 16th, 2009
"'Get In to Go Out,' the pianist's jazz quintet CD on the prolific 482 label, is a very different animal, showcasing the bright cornet tones of Josh Berman and able timekeeping by drummer Frank Rosaly. True to its name, "Vacillation" kicks things off with angularity and modern classical inflections, but "Twisted Lopes" gets deep down in a swing rhythm with Giallorezno's fluid lines on the keys. "Porous" explores nebulous, plaintive atmospheres, while a track such as "Fifth Flow" is a herky-jerky offering of free-form fire and squonky sax goodness (courtesy of multi-hornist Dave Rempis). Despite its title, "Crazy Ladies" gets the listener chilled, snapping the proverbial fingers in the jazz lounge, while Ajemian's Funk (named after ubiquitous Chicago bassist Jason Ajemian, who's not on the disc -- Anton Hatwich is) gets those ladies out of their chairs with a bit of hip-twisting and head-bobbing action. Finally, "Eternal Circle" closes out with credible solos from all and sundry, plus some lines that wouldn't be out of place on a Blue Note album -- if jazz radio doesn't pick up this track, it's missing something."

482 Music is very proud to announce the release of Get In to Go Out, the debut offering from pianist and composer Paul Giallorenzo’s
eponymous group. This release is part of the series "Document Chicago", which features some of the most exciting music to come out of Chicago in recent years.

This high-voltage aggregate features Giallorenzo’s alternately fiery and contemplative pianism in the company of saxophonist Dave Rempis, cornetist Josh Berman, bassist Anton Hatwich and Frank Rosaly on drums. Get In to Go Out presents controlled fire music born of an homage to experimental jazz of the late 1950s and blazing trails into territory illuminated by the music’s pioneers.

Make no mistake--Giallorenzo is no mere traditionalist, and the album title is meant neither as a covert dismissal nor as any sort of directive. Giallorenzo is articulating a group concept that is but one fully formed aspect of his fertile and ceaselessly exploratory imagination. A native of New York, Giallorenzo immersed himself in both rock and jazz during his high school years. Through the former, he developed an interest in synthesizers that would lead him to two collaborative projects, the startlingly original synth-pop duo Telegraph Series, and the powerful abstractions of his work with Swiss contrabass saxophonist and like-minded electro/acoustic explorer Thomas Mejer. Simultaneously, however, Giallorenzo fostered his growing infatuation with improvised forms, completely absorbing the multiple histories and complexities of forces as diverse as John Coltrane and Bill Evans, both of whom exerted strong power over his burgeoning improvisations and compositions.

It was only upon relocating to Chicago, where he received a comparative literary studies degree from Northwestern, that Giallorenzo’s vision of his own musical future began to solidify. Concerts of free improvisation at the Empty Bottle allowed him to witness the inventiveness and subtlety of performance styles and techniques as disparate as those of Tony Oxley and Fred Anderson; their ability to create new forms while maintaining adherence to the music’s traditions sowed the seeds that would come to full flower on Get In to Go Out. “I realized that I didn’t have to find a traditional melody in what they were playing,” Giallorenzo explains of those formative musical experiences. “I didn’t need to follow the music in an overly analytical way. I just needed to let it take form in the air.” Yet, his grounding in tradition was strong, fostered by years of teaching and accompanying in the standard repertoire. It became necessary to come to terms with the past and how it related to Giallorenzo’s emerging compositional voice. “In composing these pieces,” he says of the nine originals on Get In to Go Out, “I felt liberated from the trappings of tradition; I felt like I could really do something relevant to the history of the music, but above all, I wanted it to be personal.”

On Get In to Go Out, Giallorenzo strikes the perfect compromise between tradition and innovation. From the opening piano octaves of “Vacillation,” as sparsely dissonant as they are, a sense of swing pervades, one that is maintained throughout each performance. “I love the Cecil Taylor records from the late 1950s,” Giallorenzo smiles, “Like his version of “Love for Sale,” and all those Sun Ra discs from Chicago. The swing is just so pervasive that you can’t help but feel it, and they’re not trying to swing, it’s just happening naturally. At the same time, they’re introducing all of these original harmonic and melodic ideas; this is the feel I was after.”

Sometimes, the nod toward history is strikingly evident, as on the serpentine melody of “Twisted Lopes.” Rempis and Berman navigate the labyrinth with ease and dexterity as Giallorenzo underpins the free-bop aesthetic with velvety dissonances. A similar vibe pervades the spritely swing of “Steamin’ in Cleveland,” Rosaly’s impeccable precision evident in every well-timed snare and cymbal interjection.

Other tunes sport more current wisdom, such as the strident and street-smart rhythms of “Ajemian’s Funk,” a vehicle for Rosaly to show his timbral chops and for some of Rempis’ modal magic. Its vamp is infectious as the hardened first section gives way to a sweet sinewy solo from Berman, Hatwich gliding along beneath in perfect sync with Rosaly’s hip but tasty rhythms.

Even the more superficially abstract pieces have solid structural foundations; “Eternal Circle” is a nod to Charlie Parker, Sonny Stitt and Charles Mingus, abstracting ideas from compositions by all three masters to create a new form that slides, elusively, in and out of tonality while never losing its swing. “Porous (For Quintet)” is a sublime study in slow and subtle timbre shifts, emphasizing the sound complexes that can occur when saxophone and bowed bass blend perfectly.

When Giallorenzo enters, the tune’s mood changes completely, so varied is his touch on the keyboard. His pianism is simply wondrous throughout, from the most tender shades of harmony and melody to staccato bursts of freedom that update Monk and early Taylor. For the latter, look no further than his solo on “Vacillation,” a frenetic foray into the wilds of free jazz that complements perfectly the sharp drum and horn pointillism of the composed material.

Taken as a whole, Get In to Go Out is an extraordinarily bold statement from a composer and instrumentalist whose certainty exceeds his years and whose group lives inside the most “out” structures.

-Marc Medwin