Mike Moreno - Standards From Film - 2 x 180g Vinyl LPs

2023

Like a well – wrought character in a Hollywood movie, Standards From Film, guitarist Mike Moreno’s fourth Criss Cross album, exists atop a solid, cogent back story. Recorded in December 2021, when the world and New York City – Houston-born Moreno’s home for more than two decades – were no longer on COVID lockdown, it documents the leader’s exhaustive investigations into the provenance of ten iconic standards that, as he puts it, “are the summer jazz workshop tunes” – they say you have to learn these songs if you want to be a jazz musician. You learn them very young or in the beginning days of your journey into this music.

Joined by a rhythm section of generational contemporaries, each at the top of the jazz pyramid, (Sullivan Fortner, piano; Matt Brewer, bass; Obed Calvaire, drums) Moreno deploys a variety of attacks and tonalities to create dynamic tension in lyric declamations that he delivers with his signature plush, resonant tone, sublime articulation, and harmonic intelligence.

The album was recorded December 22, 2021 at the Samurai Hotel Recording Studio in NY. Recording engineer Mike Marciano also did the editing, mixing and mastering at Systems Two in NY. He also did the vinyl mastering for this 2LP issue.