Excerpts from: BILLY CHILDS: Timbres In Motion
By Kirk Silsbee (DownBeat, September 2010)
The Chamber Jazz Ensemble is a stellar mix of Los Angeles and New York players. The Ying String Quartet, bassist Scott Colley and drummer Brian Blade traveled west; saxophonist Bob Sheppard, guitarist Larry Koonse and harpist Carol Robbins are locals, like Childs. A warmup of four nights at the Jazz Bakery preceded the recording sessions last spring....
The gig at Ruth Price’s Jazz Bakery was a chance for the band to break in the new material. “It was very hard,” Koonse said, “and there were changes being made between sets and right on the bandstand. But there was something magical that happened. It just seemed to come together in a beautiful way. I mean, the Ying Quartet are some of the finest classical players in the world. To see how challenged and engaged they were was very inspiring”....
From her home in Beverly Hills, Price fondly recalled the ensemble at the Bakery, and the audience of active listeners who came out. “Billy really pulled it together because he’s fluent in both languages,” she said. “Billy’s band is something I’m proud of as a testament to what we did at the Bakery. We worked hard to re-engineer the space so that the strings could be heard. That wouldn’t have worked in a nightclub.”