Album Notes

Todd Ferris Mosby is a world class North Indian Guitar and Western Jazz Guitar virtuoso and composer combining searing Jazz Rock with North Indian Raag Influences and a twinge of Bluegrass. Crossing all age and cultural bounds, Mosby is one of the few instrumental artists in the world at home improvising on the most complex set of chord changes or the most beautiful Raag. Influenced by the music of John Mc Laughlin, Jao Gilberto, sounds of the Police, Claude Debussy, Imrat Khan and Wes Montgomery, Mosby’s ensemble performances are energetic and uplifting with a sound reminiscent of 70’s Mahavishnu and Chick Corea for Mosby Group, Pat Metheny and Jim Hall for Mosby Trio, Imrat Khan for Classical North Indian and Michael Hedges for solo guitar. Well trained and highly skilled in the classical music of North Indian, Traditional American Jazz, Brazilian Bossa Nova, Contemporary Classical Composition and Funk, Mosby creates an exciting groove oriented sound falling into the world/jazz/bossa/rock categories of music. Audiences have labeled it Southern Jazz, Western Raag and Midwestern Folk Jazz. Joyful, energetic, always cool and sophisticated Mosby performs high octane instrumental improvisational music of the highest standards. If Wes Montgomery and the Police spent 5 years in India and then came back to play gigs with earl Scruggs that is what Mosby Group sounds like __________________________________________________________ REVIEW: The jazz-fusion ensemble Mosby Group hails from St. Louis, and is led by master guitar player Todd Mosby, a gifted musician who combines searing jazz rock ala John McLaughlin, Larry Coryell, and Pat Metheny, with North Indian rag influences. Mosby utilizes electric guitar as well as the 20 stringed Indian instrument called the Imratgitar on the CD's seven lengthy pieces, and he is joined by a crew of other seasoned musicians to create an enjoyable listening experience of smoldering fusion music. -Sea of Tranquility ________________________________________________________ CD STORY This project originally started as a drum, tabla and imratgitar demo of Bhim's Palasie showcasing the imratgitar's sound for Pat Metheny and a few others. Mark and Ron liked the composition and wanted me to flesh it out for rhythm section ensemble and track it. We did this and liked the combination of sound, instruments and musicians. From there I began composing music which would blend the eastern melodic and compositional forms with the more traditional jazz modal and chordal forms as a thread and conceptual basis for the CD. Mark decided that we were to track this music as it went into the hard drive with no overdubs. We did two, maybe three takes and went with either the first or second take. Each composition goes through a range of emotive shifts so were only good for one or two takes per tune. The performances were tracked over a period of time due to different scheduling so we did one to two tunes per session. I would bring in the music we would rehearse, then track. Some tunes took two sessions until we got what we wanted. ___________________________________________________ Inside Liner Notes: Thank you for making this cd a part of your music collection. East West has its history in a love for two great improvisational forms; Classical North Indian and Traditional American Jazz. This was a fun way to bridge 10 years dedicated study in Classical North Indian music and a life long study of Traditional Jazz & Composition. Fortunate to be working with great people and exceptional talent, I began pulling works from my performance catalog which allowed a choice of playing; a) only the notes of a rag (Indian tradition), b) only the notes & scales of a chord (Jazz tradition) or, c) a modal mixture of both. The compositions explore; a) chordal harmonies within the structure and movement of a particular rag (tracks 02, 03, 05), b) the movement of rag notes parallel over parallel c