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Firehouse 12 Aims High With New Discs

by James Martin | Feb 8, 2007 8:59 am

(1) Comment | Commenting has been closed | E-mail the Author

Posted to: Arts

Nick%202%20at%20Firehouse.JPGReleasing a ten-disc boxed set of experimental jazz as its first major production does not at first glance seem the wisest way for a young label to guarantee sales. But Nick Lloyd is confident his release of Anthony Braxton‘s work will generate significant positive press and will help Firehouse 12 Records, based at the Crown Street club of the same name, hit the ground running.

Shortly after opening Firehouse 12 in April 2005, Lloyd—the club’s founder and owner—began to think of ways to expose the outside world to the vibrant avant-garde jazz scene that was rapidly developing within the club’s space. Firehouse 12 Records, which is set to release its first recordings this April, is the fruit of this effort.
Lloyd, working with partner Taylor Ho Bynum, has already gathered an impressive list of names for the label’s first releases.  Anthony Braxton, one of the mainstays of American experimental jazz since the 1960s, has agreed to release a ten-disc boxed set—nine audio CDs and one live-performance DVD—with Lloyd’s label. Also coming in April will be a live recording of Ho Bynum, himself an accomplished cornetist and composer, and a compilation of live acts from the club’s fall 2006 concert series.
After the rapid production of these three releases, Lloyd will be working with trumpeter Peter Evans, flutist and composer Nicole Mitchell, and drummer Tyshawn Sorey to produce three studio albums set for release sometime next fall. Lloyd plans to make all of the music available for download from iTunes, Rhapsody, and other online music services, along with selling the physical discs in stores and on Amazon.com.
Lloyd describes his record label as a natural outgrowth of the club’s performance space, a small, meticulously designed room on the second floor of the club that doubles as a state of the art recording studio. His goal for the project is to capture innovative improvisational music as it is performed live within this space and to make it available to a community of listeners outside of New Haven.
On the business side, as Lloyd describes it, the label will function as a “modified co-op,” with musicians contributing an initial monetary investment to their projects that will be repaid through record sales. By contributing some of their own funds to the recording fees, Lloyd hopes, the artists will feel more engaged in the production process of their music.
Lloyd’s project is certainly daring. He admits the label justifiably suffers some local criticism that it does not focus sufficiently on the promotion of New Haven jazz artists. Indeed, while Braxton is originally from Connecticut and now teaches at Wesleyan University, the majority of the label’s recording artists are based out of New York and other cities with larger musical communities. Since its opening, however, the goal of Firehouse 12 has been of a different nature. Instead of focusing wholly on local artists, the club has sought to bring into New Haven the best of the northeast’s jazz and thereby create an inclusive cultural scene unique to the city. The record label, by transmitting the musical products of this scene back to the outside world, is Lloyd’s attempt to broaden the base of those who recognize New Haven as an innovative and dynamic artistic community and a musical force to be reckoned with.

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posted by: Jason Guthartz on February 10, 2007  5:08pm

“Indeed, while Braxton is originally from Connecticut and now teaches at Wesleyan University…”

Braxton is from Chicago.

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