Matt Savage – Welcome Home (2010)
Matt Savage – piano
Bobby Watson – alto saxophone
Jeremy Pelt – trumpet
Joris Teepe, John Funkhouser – bass
Peter Retzlaff, Yoron Israel – drums
Welcome Home is album #9 for Matt – recorded, mixed and mastered by the same stellar team as “Hot Ticket”… nine-time Grammy winner Tom Bates and Grammy-nominee Jonathan Wyner. Welcome Home celebrates the many places Matt now calls “home,” from the country to the city to concerts around the world. Composed and arranged entirely by Matt, Welcome Home features both a quintet and a trio to showcase Matt’s music. The quintet lineup reunites Matt with saxophone great Bobby Watson, with whom Matt performed seven years prior. Bobby Watson is featured on alto sax, Jeremy Pelt on trumpet/flugelhorn, Joris Teepe on bass and Peter Retzlaff on drums. Several of Matt’s new compositions appear as trio recordings with various configurations comprised of Joris Teepe and Peter Retzlaff as well as longtime bassist, John Funkhouser and drummer, Yoron Israel. Recorded at Systems Two Recording Studio in Brooklyn, the album features thirteen new and original songs including the five-part Big Apple Suite, inspired by Matt’s landmark musical appearances in Manhattan. At the time, when he was a sophomore at Berklee College of Music, Matt used his campus experience as inspiration for the title track as well as the song, You Are Here. Welcome Home takes the listener from the cycles of country life to the day-to-night rhythms of a metropolitan city. “It’s about changing homes incredibly quickly and still calling it home,” says Matt. “It’s about being suddenly bombarded with information and surrounded by people and then taking a break from that. It’s about the fear of the inevitable … and the thrill of promise. It’s about returning home as much as it is about going away. And, more than anything, it’s about enjoying every minute of it.”