Pianist/composer Christopher Bakriges is set to release two simultaneous album projects...Christopher Bakriges will release two new recordings this month, The Matisse Jazz Project (a duo with violinist Stanley Chepaitis described below) and a quartet offering, Clear and Present, with Jay Hoggard on vibraphone, Billy Arnold on drums, and Avery Sharpe on bass. The Detroit native made his international debut at India’s Jazz Yatra Festival in a tour that also extended into Pakistan and Turkey -- and he's accumulated a number of playing experiences: from his hometown inner city sessions in the Motor City with Jaribu Shahid and Tani Tabbal to being music director of “Jazz Alive” for Northeast Public Radio in New York while performing with the likes of Elements featuring Danny Gottlieb and Mark Egan, as well as Dave Holland, Kenny Burrell, and Bernard Purdie. He has performed on world stages with his group Critical Theory and on programs that featured far-reaching artists like vocalist Bobby McFerrin, cellist David Darling, and Shivamani, John Mclaughlin’s sensational percussionist from India. “I always heard jazz less as a repertory and more as a possibility,” muses pianist and composer Christopher Bakriges. “I spent a long time learning about myself through the language of jazz and the nature of improvisation. Oliver Lake says that he learned about the music through writing and playing his own work. That’s how I did it, as well. Then when I heard people like Yusef Lateef, Randy Weston, Mal Waldron, and McCoy Tyner it was hearing both what was possible – the possibility -- and the warm winds of prayer. That’s what certain people are capable to doing with their music and that’s what I try to do. I trained hard and waited for the wind to turn into the breeze.” In an age of artists whose star ascends while barely in their teens and whose moniker becomes wunderkind and winning genius status by their twenties it is refreshing to hear about and listen to world class music from an older veteran whose gold medals were won in the recesses of his mind and heart and a lot of questionable venues rather than on the world’s leading concert stages. Obscurity was the price he paid for originality. The listener is rewarded in 2016 as Bakriges releases two recording projects totaling over three hours of original music.Clear and Present is a quartet effort with a group of talented musicians Bakriges always looked up to. The pianist presents eight originals with a veteran A-list group that includes bassist Avery Sharpe, drummer Billy Arnold, and vibraphonist Jay Hoggard. “This group toured before going into the studio,” says Bakriges, and the results are both a beautifully performed ensemble realization while also taking the risks necessary to make exceptionally creative music. Every track produces that special kind of time involving sound and soul. The rewarding set is a solidly mainstream jazz outing that also seamlessly incorporates chamber-like interplay and world elements – not surprising since Bakriges and his bandmates also have academic backgrounds in ethnomusicology.The group’s instrumentation would naturally indicate a nod to the Modern Jazz Quartet. “I understand the thinking and it’s an honor,” says Bakriges, “but we’re not really thinking about drawing comparisons.” Instead, his collaborators are all friends who have played together in different configurations. Bakriges and Sharpe [Archie Shepp, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, McCoy Tyner, and Pat Metheny] have been collaborating in live performance for several years now. The relationship with chitlin’ circuit stalwart Billy Arnold [Motown’s Junior Parker and the All-Stars, Zoot Sims, Teddy Wilson] spills over decades. Bakriges’ association with Jay Hoggard [Dizzy Gillespie Big Band, Chico Freeman, Max Roach, Hilton Ruiz] goes back to his graduate studies at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. “Jay was a mentor, and still is,” says Bakriges, and although they’ve played together over the years, the time was right to realize a project such as this one. The album premieres eight new compositions that can be described as both scintillating and breezy. The album opens with"Door of No Return", a powerful memorial to the Atlantic slave trade on Gorée Island off the coast of Senegal."Litima" speaks to an inner flame and each musician takes their turns with glowing, reflective solos. One of the compositions is a version of his previously recorded"Western Oceans, Eastern Seas" from The Matisse Jazz Project."Gnosis" is infectiously energetic and possesses an almost mystical insight both ancient and modern."Primary Colors,""Blue Book," and"Curious Birds" evoke the straight ahead nature of Ahmad Jamal and Kenny Barron while"Fountain of the Innocents," named after the monumental fountain erected in 16th century Paris, conjures up McCoy Tyner’s inventive two-handed forays into extended compositional forms. The quartet is a group of kindred spirits who come from a similar musical tradition that informs them. The idea was to make an ensemble and realize the music. One hears each instrument but it’s the music that is first felt. There is a clarity of purpose, passionate intentions, and quiet fire behind every tune in this brilliant set. For leaders to also play as an ensemble is rare but it’s done here. Christopher's other release is The Matisse Jazz Project [forthcoming - stay tuned!] -- compositions inspired by the iconic scissor cuts of Henri Matisse that was a published book in limited edition under the title Jazz in 1947. The contents of Matisse’s book of twenty images with accompanying text written by perhaps the greatest twentieth century master of color overwhelmed Bakriges and he began to hear music as he went from one image to another. He notes that it was as if the music was being downloaded from the artwork itself. “It was the first time I wrote music away from the piano” – he was usually in transit between New York or Boston and his home in Vermont – “so it simply became a matter of writing it down once I had gotten home.” The result is a startling vivid set of music, performed as a duo with violinist Stanley Chepaitis, defying categorization. Carol Dine, author of Van Gogh in Poems, hearing the work done with experimental film at MassArt’s Kennedy Auditorium in Boston, “was almost breathless as I listened to the works, sometimes melodious, other times, cutting edge like the blade of scissors. I’m a poet, not an expert in music, and I’d never met Chris before the performance. But to this day, I carry the music with me, still not believing the work was improvisational“. The program has been performed in galleries, house concerts, colleges, black box stages as well as in front of the actual Matisse Jazz originals at the master’s exhibition, held at the University of Indiana Art Museum in Bloomington, which included bassist Jeremy Allen of the Jacobs School of Music and historical interpreter John Moore reading excerpts from the artist’s own words. Ann K. Fields, the museum’s curatorial and educational program coordinator said that"the museum received numerous compliments regarding Bakriges’ artistic excellence and interpretations of Matisse’s Jazz series, including several remarks from community members saying this was their favorite program the museum has ever presented…the music is truly a treasure, and it was terrific to hear the images brought to life through your music. Christopher’s ability to compose, perform, and communicate your process greatly enhanced our program and conveyed a very deep understanding and reflection on Matisse’s work."Bakriges sometimes aligns with dancers and other artists to delight the audience with a stimulating inter-arts approach to the music. Karen Leuders, curator at Vermont’s Walkover Gallery in Bristol, Vermont notes simply that the compositions are “keepers in jazz literature.”