New York City is famed as the proving ground for aspiring jazz musicians, but the metropolis boasts unique challenges as well as singular delights for anyone who braves its bustling thoroughfares and soaring high rises. Trombonist Michael Dease and composer Gregg Hill both served their time in the urban jungle, formative years that provide the patchwork of colors and emotions that make up Dease’s latest album of Hill’s compositions, the multi-faceted City Life.
“We all become New Yorkers once we spend some time in the city,” Dease says. “Of course there’s that element of sophistication that we all rise to meet, but no matter how cultured you become, you can't get away from the grit and the rawness that New York exhibits.”
Available June 20, 2025 via Origin Records, City Life is the third album that Dease and Hill have crafted together – this one staggering double album primarily focused on the compositions of the prolific Mr. Hill. Both feature the stellar rhythm section of bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts, a first-time pairing whose bristling chemistry was a keen stroke of intuition on Dease’s part. For the second album they form the core of a remarkable quintet with pianist Geoffrey Keezer and tenor saxophonist Nicole Glover. Special guests include the trombonist’s daughter, Brooklyn Dease, and his former student, bassist Jared Beckstead-Craan.
These collaborators, and the carefully selected repertoire, bring out a different side of the acclaimed trombonist than many listeners might be used to. Dease is revered as one of the most versatile voices of his generation, but he’s best known as a modern-day torchbearer for the jazz tradition. City Life doesn’t deviate from that tradition so much as detour into some of its more adventurous pathways, with Dease displaying a more rough-hewn and fiery approach while maintaining his virtuosic agility.
“This project feels a bit like taking the gloves off,” Dease says. “It’s all based on that unpolished, risky feeling that you encounter in the city. These days I go back with much more money than I had when I lived there, but you still get sideswiped by a car, you still step in a puddle at the curb, you still get told to go to hell. There's no way to escape that power that New York City possesses.”
Dease spent more than a decade as a New Yorker, though he’s now lived in Michigan, where he’s a professor at Michigan State University, even longer. It’s there that he met Hill, a native of central Michigan whose diverse career paths have led him across the country. The composer turned his attention to writing music relatively late in that eclectic life, but has chalked up an impressive catalogue of tunes in an incredibly short time, partially documented on nine albums between Dease, bassist Rodney Whitaker, and guitarist Randy Napoleon.
In addition to a dozen new Hill compositions, Dease contributed a pair of his own contributions to the mix, both complementing the mood of the session. He also chose a pair of lesser-known pieces by one of his musical idols, J.J. Johnson, one by the late guitarist Emily Remler, another by saxophonist Greg Tardy, and one by his frequent collaborator, composer Sharel Cassity.
A longtime admirer of Watts’ playing, Dease knew that Tain was the perfect drummer for the session; the two had gotten to know one another during the trombonist’s six-year stint in David Sanborn’s band. While he considered a number of veteran bassists who shared proven chemistry with the drummer, he ultimately chose Oh for her profound gifts as well as the element of the unknown that the pairing brought. Dease and Oh met while attending the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program, and the bassist later appeared on Dease’s 2014 big band album Relentless.
“Tain is sort of a musical representation of New York City because the city has so many sides to it. You need somebody that is fully dedicated to their art and open-minded enough to join different musical situations. Linda shares that compatibility, and she's one of my favorite bass players, with such a deep sound.”
Keezer is another veteran of the Sanborn band, who Dease describes as, “another musical chameleon, who has a vast repository of urban experiences from Tokyo to New York to Los Angeles.” Glover, meanwhile, has rapidly established herself as one of the most vital saxophonists on the contemporary scene, as a leader, as a frequent performer with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and as a member of the supergroup Artemis. “Nicole’s sound and intensity are very commanding,” Dease continues. “She's one of the leading voices on tenor of our times, and I knew she would capture the musical message of the record.”
That message comes through loud and clear, sophisticated and gritty, hectic and elegant, throughout these two wide-ranging albums. In other words, it vibrantly captures the kaleidoscopic colors and multifarious flavors of City Life.
