GSI Records

GET TAYLOR’S NEW ALBUM “TREE FALLS” RELEASED ON MAY 21

TAYLOR EIGSTI - Piano, Rhodes, Keyboards / DAVID GINYARD - Bass / ERIC HARLAND - Drums / CHARLES ALTURA - Guitar / CASEY ABRAMS - Vocals / BECCA STEVENS - Vocals / BEN WENDEL - Sax, Bassoons / SAM SADIGURSKY - Flutes, Clarinets / NATHAN SCHRAM - Violas / EMILIE-ANNE GENDRON - Violins / HAMILTON BERRY - Cellos

Produced by Josh Giunta and Taylor Eigsti

1. SPARKY - Composed by Taylor Eigsti / Arranged by Taylor Eigsti / Additional String Arrangements by Nathan Schram
Taylor Eigsti (Piano, Rhodes, Additional Keyboards), DJ Ginyard (E. Bass), Eric Harland (Drums), Charles Altura (Guitar), Ben Wendel (Tenor Sax, Bassoon, Saxophone FX), Sam Sadigursky (Flute, Clarinets), Nathan Schram (Viola), Emilie Gendron (Violin), Hamilton Berry (Cello)  ///  I wrote this piece as a tribute to my favorite cartoon movie character, from an animated movie from 1989 called “Sparky and his Magic Piano”. I watched this movie a lot as a young child (the whole movie is now up on YouTube) and it’s one of the biggest reasons I became a pianist. Maybe the biggest actually. The movie involves a kid who discovers that he has a magical piano that plays virtuosically by itself and talks to him, melodically. His parents, who had been nagging him to practice, are shocked when he suddenly is able to play brilliantly all of a sudden, and he starts touring the world with his piano, keeping the fact that it is magically playing itself a secret from his parents and from audiences all around the world. He performs in some of the biggest venues - Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and others, and starts to get pretty full of himself. Eventually he learns a hard lesson when the piano refuses to play, and he’s left to discover the hard reality that playing the piano at a high level actually involves a lot of hard work. Sadly, pianos do not play themselves (with some obvious exceptions like the Yamaha Disklavier, etc. but who’s counting...). Throughout my life, I’ve had the opportunity to play at a lot of the venues that appear in this movie, and it’s always extra special for me when I realize I’m performing at a “Sparky Venue”. In writing this piece, I tried to combine some elements of automation - a few fast lines that repeat throughout the piece, while the bigger chords work around the line, to represent the piano talking. The piece is essentially two different songs in a way - it arrives at a “clearing” later on, where Sparky learns his lesson and gets to sit back and just enjoy a badass sax solo.

2. SKYLARK - Composed by Hoagy Carmichael / Lyrics by Johnny Mercer / Arranged by Taylor Eigsti / Additional String Arrangements by Nathan Schram
Taylor Eigsti (Piano, Rhodes, Additional Keyboards), Casey Abrams (vocals), DJ Ginyard (E. Bass), Eric Harland (Drums), Becca Stevens (Charango), Ben Wendel (Bassoon), Sam Sadigursky (Flute, Clarinets), Nathan Schram (Viola), Emilie Gendron (Violin), Hamilton Berry (Cello)  ///  I wanted to feature Casey singing one of my favorite standards, and wanted to approach it a little bit differently than how I have heard it or previously played it. Usually this is performed as a ballad, but I think when the lyrics are considered by themselves, the overall meaning of this tune can be interpreted in a variety of ways. I wanted to create a different feel behind this - funky and playful, where the main character is trying to not take himself as seriously, while asking the Skylark for answers.

3. HUTCHEONITE - Composed and Arranged by Taylor Eigsti
Taylor Eigsti (Piano, Rhodes, Keyboards), DJ Ginyard (E. Bass), Eric Harland (Drums), Charles Altura (Guitar)  ///  I wrote this piece as a tribute to Ian Hutcheon, one of the world’s greatest cosmochemists and one of NASA’s top scientists, who passed away several years ago. Unbeknownst to me while he was alive, he apparently took an interest in my music, and listened to it while working on cool things like meteorites. I have become friends with his wife Nancy, and she has been immensely supportive of my music, and I was inspired by learning more about Ian, and wanted to create a musical tribute that would honor him and his work in an interesting way. A mineral was named after him - Hutcheonite. So that became the name of this piece.

4. PLAY WITH ME - Music and Lyrics by Taylor Eigsti / Additional String Arrangements by Nathan Schram
Taylor Eigsti (Piano, Rhodes, Keyboards), Gretchen Parlato (Vocals), Becca Stevens (Vocals), DJ Ginyard (E. Bass), Eric Harland (Drums), Sam Sadigursky (Flute, Clarinets), Nathan Schram (Viola), Emilie Gendron (Violin), Hamilton Berry (Cello)  ///  I wrote this song what feels like a million years ago, and I’ve had so much fun performing it over the years, but never recorded it. I’ve also performed this so many different ways, with different forms and sections, different instrumentation, and with and without vocals. I think that as a composer it’s ok to allow your music to keep evolving and changing, letting it become a living organism, and this tune has certainly become just that. For the album version of this song, I decided I wanted to record the vocal version, and feature Gretchen Parlato to tell this story (along with Becca Stevens on background vocals throughout). I like to keep the meaning of this song slightly ambiguous, as it can take on different meanings for everyone, and the meaning of this piece keeps changing for me anyways. This is a really fun one to perform live, and I intend to keep letting the song evolve into new versions.

5. TREE FALLS (Title Track) - Composed by Taylor Eigsti / Arranged by Taylor Eigsti / Additional String Arrangements by Nathan Schram
Taylor Eigsti (Piano, Rhodes, Keyboards), DJ Ginyard (E. Bass), Eric Harland (Drums), Charles Altura (Guitar), Nathan Schram (Viola), Emilie Gendron (Violin), Hamilton Berry (Cello)  ///  The meaning behind the song is that in a world of oversharing, it’s worth exploring the unseen silence - the track and the album celebrate bringing to light the beauty that can be created when no one is around to hear it.

6. RAINBOWS - Composed by Taylor Eigsti
Taylor Eigsti (Piano, Keyboards), Shannon Eigsti (Voice)  ///  This is a very special song to me - I wrote this in memory of my sister Shannon, who passed away from cancer at the age of 17 when I was 3 years old. I’ve always wanted to write a song as a tribute to her, but I felt like I didn’t know her well enough. All I really had was some fuzzy memories as a toddler, and some old videos growing up. She was a pianist as well, and had the opportunity to play with the Doobie Brothers, and I was largely inspired to play music because of her (sibling rivalry I guess...). I have old memories of sitting at the piano with her, and I remember that I thought she was so cool, and I loved it when she would play music. As an adult, I’ve had to go through and clear out my mother’s house in California over the past few years, which has been an immense challenge, but also has led to some fascinating discoveries the more I unearthed everything, especially about my sister. One day I stumbled upon a cassette tape from 1988 of her memorial service. Kinda heavy. I realized that I had technically attended that as a 3 year old, but I was probably just crawling around on the ground trying to put as many items in my mouth as possible, as one does when you’re 3. I hadn’t really “attended” that. So I decided to confront the uncomfortable nature of what I found, and I drove to a nearby parking lot and popped the tape in my rental car, and I listened to her whole memorial service. I heard her friends talk about how resilient she was, I heard my family cry and talk about how she gave them strength, and they read some of her essays and writing about dying and how she had no fear. I had goosebumps - and for the first time in my life, I felt like I finally was starting to get to know my sister. I got out of my car the second the tape finished, went inside a local practice room, and wrote the whole song in 20 minutes - it kind of just came out right then and felt right. She was obsessed with rainbows, and had them all over her hospital bed, and so I named the song after something she loved. The very beginning of the piece features a small audio snippet of her talking as an 8 year old.

7. LISTEN IN - Composed by Taylor Eigsti and Becca Stevens
Taylor Eigsti (Piano), Becca Stevens (Vocals, Guitar), Gretchen Parlato (Vocals)  ///  This is a special song that I wrote together with Becca, which tell the story of reaching out to find perfection in your life, but needing to just listen and embrace what life sends to you when you were looking for something else.

8. ACCIDENTALLY - Music and Lyrics by Taylor Eigsti
Taylor Eigsti (Piano, Rhodes, Keyboards), Casey Abrams (Vocals), Gretchen Parlato (Vocals), Becca Stevens (Vocals), DJ Ginyard (E. Bass), Eric Harland (Drums)  ///  This song tells the story of someone who feels lost when they realize their relationship is breaking down, and how they can’t imagine how difficult it will be to imagine that their love has moved on. The main character is still in love but keeps telling himself to move on as well - that things will be ok and his heart will start beating again. But it’s pretty clear that the main character is a bit obsessed and stressed out. Casey did an unbelievable job at expressing these emotions as he sang it, and personified this main character perfectly. Becca and Gretchen join in background vocals as “supportive friends” in the situation.

9. BANDWICHES - Composed and Arranged by Taylor Eigsti
Taylor Eigsti (Piano, Rhodes, Keyboards), DJ Ginyard (E. Bass), Eric Harland (Drums), Charles Altura (Guitar)  ///  This is a little tribute to all of the shitty backstage food I’ve been subjected to over the years on the road. There’s also a hidden meaning in the title, but it’s more fun to think about crusty little sandwiches and sweaty cheese and vegetable platters backstage.

10. PLANE OVER KANSAS - Music and Lyrics by Taylor Eigsti
Taylor Eigsti (Piano), Becca Stevens (Vocals)  ///  The lyrics and story behind this piece represent some thoughts that I had while looking out an airplane window, high above somewhere over Kansas (duh). I noticed that there was a lot of interesting similarities to looking down at all of the life going on below, and looking down to the deep bottom of the ocean. There is a lot of activity, much of it quite beautiful, but from far enough up, it’s impossible to see everything that is going on. I think that we have a lot in common as human beings to creatures that exist in the dark, deep at the bottom of the ocean in that way. I think I was probably jetlagged, but that tends to lend itself to compositional ideas quite well. I wrote it with Becca in mind to sing it, and she captured everything I wanted to express in this piece so beautifully.

11. TREE FELL (Sequel to Title Track) - Composed by Taylor Eigsti / Arranged by Taylor Eigsti / Additional String Arrangements by Nathan Schram
Taylor Eigsti (Rhodes), DJ Ginyard (E. Bass), Charles Altura (Guitar), Nathan Schram (Viola), Emilie Gendron (Violin), Hamilton Berry (Cello)  ///  This is the conclusion of Tree Falls, confirming that, indeed a tree fell, and it made a noise. This was a perfect little vehicle for Charles Altura to play a short and heartbreaking guitar solo over a slowly moving bed of lush strings, re-stating the theme of the record, and playing as the listener walks out of the room.

12. THE DJ SITUATION (Bonus Track) - Composed by Taylor Eigsti and Josh Giunta
Taylor Eigsti (Piano, Voicemail), Charles Altura (Guitar), Eric Harland (Drums)  ///  This is a voicemail that I sent to Josh Giunta explaining that DJ came down with food poisoning and that he won’t be able to make the recording session. Trying to track all of this music without DJ definitely led to some pent-up musical frustration amongst myself, Charles, and Eric, and we needed a few moments to chop out and just get it out of our system. While DJ was busy getting it out of his system as well. I didn’t want to let this record end without poking some fun at his situation....(and plus, after a long emotional journey through this music, it could use a little comic relief at the end...)

Engineered and Mixed by Josh Giunta | Mastered by Andrew Balogh at Capitol Records

Jason Rostkowski - Assistant Engineer

Recorded at GSI Studios (2018/2019) NYC

Gretchen Parlato and Ben Wendel appear courtesy of Edition Records.

*Track 7 (“Listen In” Partially recorded and tracked at Tedesco Studios - tracking engineer Tom Tedesco / Initial tracking produced by Drew Moore)

ABOUT THE ARTIST

New York-based pianist and composer Taylor Eigsti started playing the piano when he was four years old. Growing up in Menlo Park, CA, Eigsti was quickly labeled a prodigy, and has since released 7 albums as a bandleader, in addition to appearing on over 50 albums as a sideman. Eigsti has garnered multiple individual GRAMMY Award nominations over the years for his work as a recording artist and composer, including Best Instrumental Composition, and Best Jazz Instrumental Solo. Eigsti also co-wrote a featured composition with Don Cheadle for the 2017 GRAMMY-winning soundtrack to the motion picture “Miles Ahead”.

Over the past 30+ years, Eigsti has had the good fortune of performing, touring or recording with such luminaries as Dave Brubeck, Chris Botti, Joshua Redman, Sting, John Mayer, Esperanza Spalding, Chick Corea, Terence Blanchard, Joshua Bell, Snarky Puppy, Vanessa Williams, David Benoit, Chris Potter, Nicholas Payton, Christian McBride, Julian Lage, Michael Nesmith, Marian McPartland, Stefon Harris, McCoy Tyner, Lisa Fischer, Joey DeFrancesco, Red Holloway, James Moody, Ernestine Anderson, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Becca Stevens, Charles McPherson, The Clayton Brothers, Eldar, Dianne Schuur, Joe Lovano, Ambrose Akinmusire, Hank Jones, The Brubeck Brothers, and Frederica Von Stade, among many others.

Eigsti has travelled internationally quite extensively with his trio and quartet, and also has been a frequent and integral part of the regular touring bands of Chris Botti, Eric Harland Voyager, Gretchen Parlato, Kendrick Scott Oracle, and Sachal Vasandani. Eigsti's career has involved much global touring, and he has performed at many premiere venues throughout the world, including the Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie Hall, Salle Pleyel, Red Rocks Amphitheater, Royal Festival Hall, Vienna Konzerthaus, Olympia Hall, Massey Hall, Lincoln Center, Davies Symphony Hall, and many top festivals including Montreal Jazz Festival, North Sea Jazz Festival, Singapore Mosaic Music Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, Stockholm Jazz Festival, Istanbul Jazz Festival, Quito Jazz Festival, Jakarta Jazz Festival, Sydney Jazz Festival, Newport Jazz Festival, Chicago Jazz Festival, Toronto Jazz Festival, and many more performances worldwide, including a private performance for former President Bill Clinton.

Eigsti has also been featured numerous times in various television specials, NPR appearances, commercials, and composed the theme music to the motion picture "Detachment" (2011) starring Oscar-winner Adrien Brody, collaborating on the score with the Newton Brothers. In 2019, Eigsti was also featured on a television special with Chris Botti for PBS’s “Great Performances”.

In addition to leading and performing with various small ensembles, Eigsti frequently has had the opportunity to work with, compose for and orchestrate music for various symphony orchestras, and has written an extensive repertoire of music for orchestra and jazz ensemble. Various soloist and compositional features include the San José Chamber Orchestra, Oakland Symphony, New York Philharmonic, New York Pops, Chicago Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Buffalo Orchestra, Naples Philharmonic, Nashville Symphony, Sacramento Philharmonic, Boston Youth Symphony, New York Pops, Pittsburgh Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, San Jose Youth Symphony, Golden State Youth Orchestra, Bear Valley Symphony, Tassajara Symphony, Reno Philharmonic and multiple featured collaborations with the Peninsula Symphony Orchestra.