Sam Decker - Shrove

2020 release

There is a misconception that freely played music must be melee, a literal free for all. Of course, that needn’t be the case as there are ways to direct improvisers with clear intent. It also helps to build trusting relationships with those recruited to perform the music in such a communal spirit.

Saxophonist/composer Sam Decker has focused much of his energy into purely improvised music. The Illinois-bred, Brooklyn-based Decker focused the past six years on developing music that blended his fascination with folk-inflected sounds of composers like Igor Stravinsky, Bela Bartok and Dmitri Shostakovich with the color and power of improvised music. The outcome is his first release that fits squarely in the jazz realm of composition meeting improvisation, namely, Shrove.