Jerome Sabbagh Stand Up! 180g LP

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Composer, musician and owner of the Analog Tone Factory label, saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh has reconvened his longstanding quartet for the first time in more than a decade for his 2025 release Stand Up! With all original compositions by Sabbagh, the album features guitarist Ben Monder, bassist Joe Martin, and new addition, drummer Nasheet Waits. The album was recorded by James Farber at Power Station, direct to analog tape and mastered by Bernie Grundman.

Sabbagh has always prided himself on being an artist who stands up strongly for the qualities and principles that he believes in — artistic integrity, bold individuality, social consciousness, and a distinctive personal vision. His vibrant new album, Stand Up!, asserts those values in a number of ways, wedding memorable compositions to fervent playing by Sabbagh's longtime quartet. Stand Up! was recorded live to analog tape and released on the saxophonist's own label, Analog Tone Factory.

With Stand Up!, Sabbagh celebrates more than 20 years with his outstanding quartet — guitarist Ben Monder, bassist Joe Martin, and, making his recorded debut with the band, drummer Nasheet Waits. The album marks the group's first release in more than a decade, a period in which Sabbagh has focused on fruitful collaborations with jazz elders including pianist Kenny Barron (Vintage) and the late drummer Al Foster (Heart).

Throughout that time, the quartet has never lost its prominent place among Sabbagh's priorities.

"A lot of my favorite music in jazz has been created by working bands," the saxophonist states. "Miles Davis' first and second quintets, the John Coltrane quartet, the Bill Evans Trio, Lovano / Frisell / Motian — those are real bands. Part of what made them so great is the fact that they played together with a certain frequency, even if they didn't stay together for so many years."

The centrality of the core idea behind Stand Up! to Sabbagh's artistic thinking is reflected by the fact that the album shares its title with a composition that the quartet recorded on its second album, 2007's Pogo. It felt all the more relevant as a cri de cœur today, both as the band's debut on Sabbagh's new independent imprint and in regards to the larger backdrop of political turmoil against which it was created.

"I believe that the title captures the feel of the moment," Sabbagh explains. "I feel both a desire and a sense of urgency to be myself artistically, to try to write music I believe in and play it with the people that I have a strong connection with. It's also time to stand up for what you believe in, whether that means making an artistic statement or finding a way to affect our political reality in a positive way."

As far-reaching as that concept may be, the pieces that Sabbagh wrote for Stand Up! are also intimate and deeply personal, each one dedicated to a person (or people) who has impacted the path of his music — some of them friends and colleagues, most of them influences and inspirations.

As always, Sabbagh has a strong sense of matching artwork with content on his releases, choosing impactful imagery that echoes the album's themes in oblique yet poetic fashion. The pictures that grace the front and back covers of Stand Up! are both the work of Italian photographer Michele Palazzo, who also provided the cover shot for Heart. The front cover's play of light, reflection and distortion suggest a Blade Runner sci-fi dystopia; the reverse is a stark black and white image of a lone human figure dwarfed by a looming, oppressive concrete wall. Both conjure the threat of cold, anti-human forces and the desire for escape.

Humanity converging to create something of beauty — that is the spirit summoned by Stand Up! "It's so important to me that this band is still together after all these years," Sabbagh says. "If you're going to go out on a limb and take chances to try to come up with something you've never played before, you need trust, and we have that in this band. Jazz is social music. We come up with ideas when playing with other people that we wouldn't necessarily discover by ourselves. That's one of the great beauties of this music, and a big part of what attracts me to it."

My favorite track from Stand Up! is the very first, Ray Charles inspired R&B tune 'Lone Jack' with Jerome's silky playing combined with Ben Monder's experimentation on guitar.