The best music is an authentic revelation by the performer, the creation of which is highly personal. Genuine personal expression requires a context based upon love and trust. This recording is a result of cumulative trust built up over years of shared experience.

Dave Askren and Jeff Benedict have been playing together in and around L.A. for 30 years This is their 12th recording together, the 4th as headliners. Ted Piltzecker is from New York – he and Jeff have a musical connection going back to the Aspen Music Festival in the 1980’s, where they were colleagues for 9 years. Paul Romaine and Patrick McDevitt are from Denver. Paul and Jeff began their musical journeys there, and Paul was in the first working band Jeff ever put together – both were in high school at the time. Patrick learned to play jazz at the Colorado Conservatory for the Jazz Arts, a Denver area organization founded and run by Paul and his wife Chris. This web of connections facilitated an environment of trust among musicians.

In Jazz, the musical expression is a collective improvisation based on a tune which serves as a framework upon which the individual musicians build a piece of music. The music is built in a dialogue - It is simultaneously an individual expression and a group creation. It is a musical conversation that can reveal the aggregate “soul” of the group. When that conversation is rooted in love and respect for one another and not by individual ego, the result can be breathtaking.