CD Review: The Awakening * Live *

The Awakening * Live *
Frank A. Stokes, Composer and bandleader, Fretless Electric Bass
Dan Walsh, Drums
Eric Roos, Keyboards
Featuring The Awakening Horns
David W. Morgan, Saxophone and Flute
Glenn Makos, Trumpet

Available From:
www.mp3.com/theawakening

Composer Frank A. Stokes has undergone a remarkable personal and musical
evolution, performing since 1970 as an electric bassist. His career began in
the New York underground scene with Kongress, later known as Shanghai
Sideshow. These acts played for crowds as large as 100,000 people and on
runs as long as the month they took over New York's Elgin Theatre. These
acts were fronted by the late Geoffrey Crozier, an influential figure in the
worlds of illusion as the inventor of the Dancing Cane and also a man of
influence on the downtown New York performance art scene. Frank A. Stokes
was a young bassist influenced by Black Sabbath and Grand Funk Railroad
whose pioneering work in shaping the sound of modern music is only now being
placed in context, while he has long since moved on into the world of jazz.
A chance meeting with Jaco Pastorius led to a friendship over the last two
and a half years of Jaco's life. From the mid eighties to the present Frank
Stokes has been working his way up the ladder of the New York jazz scene.
The Awakening *Live * captures the rise of a remarkable ensemble through
clubs with little or no sound reinforcement, amazingly, the performance of
the Frank Stokes composition "Prelude" presented on the CD was executed
without a PA in an intimate SoHo Art Gallery Cafe. The record presents five
Frank Stokes original compositions recorded during the spring of 1998 and
showcases a remarkable lineup of talent. Drummer Dan Walsh is a Berklee
graduate with a degree in commercial arranging. Keyboardist Eric Roos was
classically trained in his native Switzerland, and The Awakening Horns are
worthy of serious consideration. David W. Morgan works on the production of
the Tony Awards, he is in a sense an expert transcriber being fed new
melodies by an important composer, while Glenn Makos is a technically superb
trumpeter and also a teacher of gifted students. As for the origins of the
music, it is a signature sound born of the composer's background as a Native
American. Frank A. Stokes is of Navajo descent. He offers his music in the
form of healing energy, in blasts of beauty where the songs run to over ten
minutes in some cases and there's plenty of freedom for these gifted men to
improvise, indeed, the version of "Prelude" presented here was recorded on
trumpeter Glenn Makos' first night with the band, but it sounds like he'd
been there forever. There are few players of Frank Stokes' generation from
his time and place who are still evolving and even fewer people making as
vital a contribution to the advancement of modern jazz.

This review written by Angelo J. Falanga
For further information visit
www.mp3.com/theawakening
and click the link for the Artist's Website under Artist Extras