Signal to Noise: Tag Joe Rosenberg, reeds, leader; Masako Hamamura, piano; Edward Perraud, drums; Peter Scherr, bass www.joerosenberg.net http://www.masakohamamura.com/ http://www.edwardperraud.com/Home.html www.peterscherr.com http://www.youtube.com/user/peterscherr This recording is Joe Rosenberg's most fully realized project so far for 1hr. music and Quark. We knew that we had something special when Edward Perraud first joined the band on drums in January 2008. Repertoire that we had been struggling with for the previous year started to come into focus, and we started finding new avenues for improvisational exploration. You can see some fine video clips of this group's first performances in Hong Kong in January 2008 here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAS8UsxC1Nk and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-CsOroFtyQ&feature=related and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpcm2ygwBkE&feature=related We did some exploratory recordings on this first outing. Interesting, but not quite ready for release. So we planned a further set of sessions for the fall of 2008. Two tours later, should be enough, we figured. And it worked out really well. We had our fall China tour first. This was the first one with new road manager David Wong, and was a really fun tour. And the music started to come together a lot better. Once in the studio, we set up and got sounds very carefully, and recorded for a few days. We ended up with lots of vibey tracks in the can (well, on the hard disk, anyway) Initial listening of the roughs indicated that we really had something special. Edward sent the rough mixes to a programmer of creative music at Radio France, and we were invited to perform a concert on the radio in Paris, May 22, 2009. Joe and I had an extended back and forth during mixing, and when we were finally done, we had a sequence and sonic texture that we were both proud of. Here are a few reviews for Tag: Joe Rosenberg makes beautifully unconventional music, and Tag, his latest project with the jazz ensemble Signal to Noise reminds us why he is one of our favorite artists in town. Laying down slender twisting grooves, the seven-track release makes even the sour notes sound good. Built on counterintuitive chord progressions, Scherr on bass, Joe Rosenberg on soprano sax and bass clarinet, Masako Hamamura on piano and Edward Perraud on drums and percussion play their way to satisfying resolutions. On opening track That 11 Thing, for instance, Joe Rosenberg pips amelodig fragment that somersaults with rising and fading energy and then suddenly falls silent for minutes, before returning at the end. On Tag, a piece in which only two musicians can perform simultaneously, and the others can force their way in -the concoction is playful, conversational, fickle and compelling. Rosenberg sails high but never shrills. Hamamura captivates with slyly elastic entrances. Perraud asserts on drums in well-formed proportion. And the ever-disciplined Scherr makes an even thrum, feel-wise. The four each call different countries home, so live gigs are rare. Next best thing is to hunt down a copy of Tag at CD baby or www.peterscherr.com. It's one of the best locally produced albums we've heard in ages. -bong miquiabas Time Out Hong Kong Signal to Noise (1) is what Joe Rosenberg calls his quartet when they are playing only his own compositions. When the same line-up of clarinetist Rosenberg with pianist Masako Hamamura, TAG bassist Peter Scherr, and drummer Edward Perraud deconstruct Jazz standards on the bandstand, he calls the group JRQ. And while the standards they tear apart may hand you a familiar lifeline into the music, Signal to Noise is a 4tet worth hearing. Rosenberg was a student of the late John Carter, and while his compositions don’t have the grand conceptual structures of Carter’s Roots and Folklore Suites, they do share the intense and complex musicality of Carter, and this is no minor compliment. Signal to Noise is a strong 4tet here, very tight and adept at making the quick turns and switches Rosenberg’s music requires. Hamamura brings a lyrical sense of harmony to the group, grounding even the music’s minor seconds in the overall tonality. At their best, Rosenberg’s compositions have their roots in Monk, though they show the influence of everywhere the music has gone since then. His clarinet sound is a delight too, grounded in the tradition but headed into abstraction. He really should be better known. (1) is a good place to start, if you don’t know his work already. -Cadence ALL ABOUT JAZZ ITALIA • Vincenzo Roggero – October 2009 * * * With almost a total absence of liner notes - and in order to discover the musicians and their instruments, one must pay close attention to the polished cover of the CD - an incredibley realistic picture that unites the front and back cover, and inside the CD a kind of hieroglyphic, that begins from the ending "tag," and opens to the second "raggiera" giving a logic that is apparently entwined and connected. This is how Tag introduces the debut album “Signal to Noise,” this multilingual quartet of improvisers, headed by an American saxophonist and clarinetist Joe Rosenberg, author of all the compositions. Four musicians use to performing in the universe of music, not accepting any compromises nor limitations of any kind, but moving easily on any landscape. The music of Tag always provides new openings because it is free from more or less predictable fixed patterns like from those that one may find from tea towels. Rather, the music of Tag moves, in the frank and honest zone where one may find silence, where one may find dissonance, where one may find tonal inventions that are developed almost by osmosis, where one may find reflections and Chinese shadow puppets of noise, and where one may find noise from blades that cut the air like a painting by Fontana. Overall Tag is complex, and at times excessively imploding on itself, surrounding itself by a palpable aura of intellectualism, with sequences of some interest, but in which the musicians do not successfully convey the sense of urgency expressed in an appropriate communication channel. “