Individually, guitarist Nate Mercereau, sax player Josh Johnson and percussionist Carlos Niño have collaborated with jazz visionaries (Kamasi Washington, Shabaka Hutchings, Jeff Parker) and more mainstream artists (André 3000, Meshell Ndegeocello). Together, they’re testing the limits of ambient jazz, a form with boundaries that are already pliable.
Mercereau, Johnson and Niño’s new Openness Trio (Blue Note) compiles five recordings from an equal number of sessions tracked in distinct settings around Los Angeles and Ventura County, Calif.: outdoors in the Ojai hills with a view of the Topatopa Mountains; in a living room in Elysian Park; in a grove of oak trees at Ojai’s Churchill Orchard; in the courtyard of an Echo Park home; and at exclusive rural estate Elsewhere Topanga.
As you might expect, Openness Trio is very much a product of its surroundings—and an expansive reflection of the emotion-packed exploratory ideal the group is chasing after. Here’s more from Mercereau.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “Hawk Dreams”
“We were recording in Ojai in the backyard of a house in the hills, and there were hawks flying in the air all afternoon—several of them at once. Mixing and editing this session reminded me of watching them, so I named it for the hawks. There’s something about how recordings sound when made outdoors. The sound doesn’t reflect in the same way as inside, and the music has a lot of clarity. The sound immediately interacts with the environment, and you can feel that presence in the recording.”
2) “… Anything Is Possible”
“This phrase is related to how we think about the creative potential of this trio. We come together and arrive in the moment, bringing our whole lives. Then we go from there. It’s all happening. Anything can and does happen at any moment—and we go anywhere.”
3) “Openness”
“Another term we use to describe what’s happening in the group, individually and beyond. We like to continually update the terminology surrounding and describing the music we’re making. It keeps it fresh and relevant for us to use words that are resonant to how we feel about our lives and what it’s like to do this. For me, a few more right now are ‘trust music,’ ‘music with a sense of discovery,’ ‘exploratory music’ … It’s always evolving.”
4) “Chimes In The Garden”
“We were at a house in the courtyard having a recording session, set up between [the owner’s] plants, with a few folks listening in on the process. Our setup this day really looked like a garden of instruments within the courtyard garden.”
5) “Elsewhere”
“Named for the place where it was recorded in Topanga Canyon. We set up in a clearing underneath a pepper tree. This was the last exploration of the day, and we finished as the sun was setting. I had lots of thoughts about what it’s like to be here and to not be here, where else we are and can go, and how we can be many things at once.”
