There is a moment in every live performance when the music stops belonging to anyone in particular. The composer relinquishes it. The musician transmits it. The audience receives it - and in receiving it, sends something back. Art Blakey called it split-second timing: from the Creator, to the artist, direct to the audience. It is this theology of immediacy that animates EXCHANGE, the new live album from Brent Birckhead, captured at the iconic Keystone Korner in Baltimore.

EXCHANGE is not a document. It is a transaction. Where Birckhead’s previous albums excavated the interior life — the solitude of self-reclamation on CACAO, the bold declaration of selfhood on BIRCKHEAD - this record turns outward, insisting that music is not a solitary art but a covenant renewed in real time between musicians and the room that holds them.

Each track was meticulously multitracked to preserve every texture of the performances, yet the album’s animating force is precisely what no engineering can manufacture: the unmistakable electricity of people making something together that could not have existed any other way.

1. Todd Barkan Intro
2. Will The Real Kenny Gee Please Stand Up (ft Warren Wolf)
3. Take 5 (ft Warren Wolf, Imani Grace, Sean Jones)
4. Cacao (ft Imani Grace, Chelsey Green)
5. For You (ft Imani Grace, Chelsey Green)
6. Soundcheck (ft Imani Grace, Chelsey Green)
7. Woody’s Interlude (ft Brandon Woody)
8. Moonlit Waters
9. Rain (ft Imani Grace, Chelsey Green)

Opening with a short benediction from NEA Jazz Master and Grammy-winning producer Todd Barkan, up first is the scintillatingly ambient masterpiece Will The Real Kenny Gee Please Stand Up and that is followed by the sparkling Take 5 and the frenetically charged Cacao.

Along next is a soaring For You and that is in turn backed seamlessly by the luxuriant hipsway within Soundcheck, a short, but sweet Woody’s Interlude, the set rounding out on the affectingly emotive Moonlit Waters, coming to a close on the robustly invigorating Rain.

Personnel:
BRENT BIRCKHEAD - Alto Saxophone/Flute/ Bass/Clarinet
NOBLE JOLLEY JR. - Piano, Keyboards (3-6,8-9)
JOSÉ ANDRE - Piano, Keyboards (2,7)
ROMEIR MENDEZ - Acoustic & Electric Bass (2-3,7)
ELIOT SEPPA - Acoustic & Electric Bass (4-6,8-9)
DEVRON DENNIS - Drums
THEMBA MKHATSHWA - Aux Percussion

Special Guests:
BRANDON WOODY - Trumpet (7), CHELSEY GREEN - Violin (4-6,9)
IMANI GRACE-COOPER - Vocals (3-6,9)
SEAN JONES - Trumpet (3), WARREN WOLF - Vibraphone (2-3)

Official Purchase Link

www.www.brentbirckhead.com