Diatribe Recordings

On their first appearance two years ago, this piano/drums/trumpet trio seemed a class act. This debut confrims it. Poised between jazz and contemporary classical music, its balance of form and improvisational freedom is reinforced by the compositions, four each by Felton and Wick, with one by Carpio. Pieces like the astringent Mutatis Mutandis, or the punningly, bilingually titled Susan Styra, develop into notably wide ranging dialogue (and, in Susan Styra, a mocking, witty, straight-ahead conclusion). The cleverness can be self-conscious, as in Recent Events. But there is also lyric quality in the faltering grace of Lonely Toad, the oddly childlike Sung Once and Wick’s tour de force, The Fisherman’s Song, to emphasise that the group is about more than just challenge. This is gripping music by a subtle and adventurous trio.

— Ray Comiskey, The Irish Times

In 2005 young New York trumpeter (and former Chicagoan) Jacob Wick hit it off with a couple of Irish musicians he met at the prestigious Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music in Canada. He kept in touch with pianist Greg Felton and drummer Sean Carpio, and since then they’ve formed the transatlantic trio White Rocket, whose self-titled debut was just released stateside on Diatribe. The album’s bracing, wide-open postbop makes it clear why they’ve been willing to deal with the hassles of a long-distance band: its nine pieces, all originals, cover plenty of ground, from Wick’s “Recent Events,” whose episodic rises and falls in tempo, volume, and density make it feel almost like a radio news roundup, to Felton’s wonderfully lyrical ballad “Lonely Toad,” where Wick remains respectful of the melody, never disrupting its subdued tone, even as he mutates it constantly throughout the tune’s five minutes. Felton and Carpio are a vivacious but precisely controlled rhythm section, and Wick—who on his previous Chicago visit focused on radical extended technique—uses this relatively straight-ahead band to show off another facet of his impressive musical personality.

— Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader

Some could call White Rocket’s music free jazz or avantgarde jazz, and while those labels indirectly help explain what the piano-drums-trumpet trio performs, instrumental improvisational music seems an appropriate starting place, since White Rocket’s material does not fit easily into any one specific jazz genre or pigeonhole.

Sean Carpio, Jacob Wick, and Greg Felton are influenced by Indian Carnatic music, pop artists such as Nick Drake and Björk, classical composers like Igor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith, and jazz players that include Miles Davis. But those originators are not overtly perceived among the nine tracks on the threesome’s debut release. Rather, listeners can hear original and versatile ingredients with an utterly unique viewpoint, where there’s often a sparse melody and diversely honed choral changes.

White Rocket is a democracy. All three members contribute to the writing: Wick and Felton both have four pieces and Carpio donates one. The unusual configuration of trumpet, piano, and drums also lends itself to a triad unity, since the bass-less structure forces the participants to take on different roles in each composition.

There is a sense of tension and underlying risk which permeates the proceedings. Opener “Mutatis Mutandis” is leavened by Felton’s lashed piano, Wick’s twisting and complexly wrought trumpet soloing, and Carpio’s dynamically shifting drums. Felton’s piano undulates a ghostly chord progression beneath Wick’s oscillating trumpet. The song exits with a murmuring and slightly foreboding bearing, a haunting way to finish.

White Rocket then advances toward a relatively standard route with Felton’s narrative “His Story,” where the instruments call and respond to each other in what starts out as a straightforward approach. But before long the action is heightened by Felton’s cinematic keyboard cadence and his flurry of fluxed chords, while Wick interjects perceptive high notes which carry the melody, and offers a flitting trumpet that ripples above Carpio’s animated snare drums and his rhythmic coloring. Another fine piano/trumpet interaction occurs on Felton’s melodic and solemn “Lonely Toad,” a thoughtfully disconsolate discourse. Everyone exerts a gossamer quality: Wick supplies the album’s most beautiful trumpet inflections, while Carpio’s gentle percussion wafts underneath.

Felton’s compositional aptitude also strongly augments the longest component, “Susan Styra” a twelve-minute piece that moves in nearly every direction, and begins with a brisk, spherical melody, while Wick’s lyrical trumpet widens lengthwise as Felton unveils stately keyboard changes. Near the halfway point, Carpio takes an expansive drum solo, and prods insistently on his cymbals and toms. When Wick and Felton reenter, the tune is translated ingeniously into a strange kind of swinging modern jazz. The elaborate arrangement is doubtlessly one of the compact disc’s more memorable moments.

Wick was born and raised in Chicago, and his writing reflects the distant, wide open spaces of his native Midwest. He states he rarely tells stories with his songs. He prefers to create a tangible autobiographical feeling, evidenced during the suggestive “Recent Events” - which Wick says depicts a bad time he went through while in Amsterdam. Whatever happened, it must have left a persuasive impact, since the tune is punctuated by several significant stops that occur between Felton’s accented and unearthly, lower-register piano accompaniments and Wick’s bustling trumpet playing. “Symptoms” has a clockwork calmness that is almost spiritual. There is a zealous moderation and wind down, even when Carpio’s percussive parts form a modulating pressure that threatens to boil over. Wick’s pensive “The Fisherman’s Song” is highlighted by his sobering foghorn-like solo trumpet dialogue. Felton subtly glides in with some forlorn piano that echoes Wick’s contemplative flavoring, followed by Carpio’s understated percussive efforts.

White Rocket demonstrates compelling proof of open-minded musical designs at work. Greg Felton, Sean Carpio, and Jacob Wick are incisive and purposeful, and have devised music that captures the essence of their improvisational and imaginative game plan.

— Audiophile Audition

Positioned in the crux of classic modernism and eclectic-bop expressionism, jazz trio White Rocket make compositions that speak volumes about how the language of music can be wheedled into inspiring vignettes that teeter between having ornery spurs and a graceful demeanor. The trio’s self-titled debut album is constructed from their instruments interweaving and tangling into each other creating segments of discord and intervals of lofty flourishes. The rhythmic swells of pianist Greg Felton and drummer Sean Carpio have a jocular-tilt with groves of billowing trumpet flecks plotted by bandleader Jacob Wick. Liken to Jazz Groove’s recording artists The Vampires, the lyrical phrases of the instruments move in a state of continual flux, bumping into each other and tumbling over one another like a gaggle of frolicking puppies at times or like torn souls finding their way in the dark. The instruments sketch slippery streaks and fiery spears in the chord changes making mutable patterns through the opening track “Mutatis Mutandis.” The following track “His Story” is heightened by a dusting of energetic piano keys and dinghies of puffing trumpet notes that flutter and flail over the lively snare drums. The trio softens up on the dark and moody slopes of “Recent Events” pausing here and there and picking up tangential angles. The composition turn obscure and hazy, contrasting the pointy riffs and rapid movements of “Hone” and the mournful coloring of “Lonely Toad.” Springy piano keys sleigh over melodic knolls with a festive spree along “Susan Styra” and wane down to a coasting sail through “Symptoms.” The rules of a jamband seem to apply here, where one instrument goes, the others follow and no track exemplifies this more than “Sung Once.” The trio closes their self-titled album with softly brushed strokes dissolving into solemn clovers strewn across “The Fisherman’s Song” choreographed from drifting trumpet wails and bourbon hued piano locks.
White Rocket’s self-titled album opens up new ideas for contemporary jazz models. The trio appropriates classic jazz idioms when the feeling strikes them, merging with their inventive maneuvers. White Rocket began with New York-based trumpeter Jacob Wick who recruited Dubliners Greg Felton and Sean Carpio for the project in 2005. All three of their personalities can be heard in the compositions, and their chemistry is inspiring. The compositions are one of kind, and speak a language that may seem foreign to many people but somehow the instruments flatter each other and show the trio in a promising light.

— JazzReview.com

Hard hitting jazz trio with trumpet in the third corner of the triangle, this bunch of young progressives love their music on the hotly creative side. Genre blending with ease within the lines, these are hard core players that still believe in the purity of their voices and have the guile of youth to back it up to keep the passion undiluted. Old wave new jazz that brings young hipsters into the tent.

— Midwest Record