PRESS


"Trombonist and singer of buoyant charm." 
                                                                            - Nate Chinen, The New York Times

Asher is part of a burgeoning Manhattan revival of early jazz. She and her groups — a sextet called Emily Asher’s Garden Party and a trio, Endangered Species — have fun with vintage material but don’t make fun of it, as so many post-modern groups have done. Though they do not come across as overly earnest, there is also nothing tongue in cheek about their versions of Hoagy Carmichael’s “New Orleans” and “Memphis in June” or Percy Venables’ “Big Butter and Egg Man,” notably recorded by Louis Armstrong. 
                                                                              -The Seattle Times

"When Endangered Species takes up a song like Irving Berlin’s “Marie,” Asher’s vocal has the effect of time travel, taking the listener back to 1929, which feels pretty good."
                                                                            -The Seattle Times

"It was pure joy hearing Emily Asher's Garden Party last night at the Triple Door. It is some of the most beautiful music I've heard in a long time."
                                                                             -Clarence Acox

“Emily Asher’s Garden Party, a deliberately prosaic name deviously calculated to describe a very exciting combo.”  
-Will Friedwald, The Wall Street Journal

"simply extraordinary hot jazz played by some of the finest young musicians devoted to keeping this music alive today."
                                                                            -Ricky Riccardi, Louis Armstrong Biographer

"Emily Asher certainly knows how to throw a party. And her brilliance isn’t a matter of laying in huge quantities of blue corn chips and IPA, nor is it because of those cookies she bakes. In fact, Emily comes to the party with little except her trombone, some sheet music, and her insistence that everyone have a good time and swing."
                                                                           -Michael Steinman JAZZ LIVES

“In traditional jazz, the trombone comes closest to the human voice, although up to now it's rarely been cast as a distinctly female voice… Ms. Asher plays with both grit and grace”
-The Wall Street Journal

"As a trombonist, her tone is warm and smooth but she’s not afraid to mix it up in the ensembles, showing a natural gift for the joys of polyphonic improvisation. As a singer, Asher’s voice is unfailingly sweet and earnest, one created for music such as this."
                                                                         -Ricky Riccardi, Louis Armstrong Biographer

Emily Asher's Carmichael collection finds lots of interesting and new things to do with the music of Bloomington, Ind.'s most celebrated son.”  
-The Wall Street Journal

“Emily and her friends have understood something deep about the delicate balance between honoring the originals and creating something new.” -Michael Steinman JAZZ LIVES   




JAZZ LIVES November 15, 2013 Review of Carnival of Joy!

CARNIVAL OF JOY is not an attempt to copy hallowed recordings or performances.  Of course I hear sly touches of Louis and Fats and Hoagy himself in these performances, but they are admiring glances rather than full-dress impersonations.  Emily and her friends have understood something deep about the delicate balance between honoring the originals and creating something new, so each of the six songs here is a small, casual drama in itself — joyous or somber, wild or pensive (and in the case of ROCKIN’ CHAIR, nearly ominous) — with singing and playing that adeptly honor the song and carry its many messages straight to us.
Click here to read Michael Steinman's full review

The Wall Street Journal September 21, 2013






The Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2013:

The next week is bringing launch events for three superior albums, two of which are at Joe's Pub: Emily Asher's Hoagy Carmichael celebration (Saturday) and Marissa Mulder's Tom Waits package (July 15). (Ms. Asher's album is called "Carnival of Joy"; Ms. Mulder's well-conceived, highly moving show might be called "Carnival of Despondency.")

...

Emily Asher's Garden Party Celebrates Hoagy Carmichael

Joe's Pub

425 Lafayette St.,

(212) 539-8778

Saturday

"Carnival of Joy" is a line from Hoagy Carmichael's "Jubilee," one of the 14 songs by that composer that Louis Armstrong established as a jazz classic. Granted that a traditional jazz album of Carmichael songs is less radical than a Latin take on Strayhorn, but trombonist, vocalist, and bandleader Emily Asher's Carmichael collection finds lots of interesting and new things to do with the music of Bloomington, Ind.'s most celebrated son.

Ms. Asher's band, Garden Party, co-stars the eloquent trumpet prodigy Mike Davis, who blasts in a Beiderbeckian mode on "Riverboat Shuffle" and "Lazy Bones" (which also features a standout guitar solo by Nick Russo), and sings a romantic/comic duet with Ms. Asher on "Two Sleepy People." Bravo also to Joe's Pub, which, more than any other club in town, had the good sense to feature 1920s style hot jazz as well as modern jazz, even as it features cabaret (and even the so-called alt cabaret) alongside pop and rock acts.

-Will Friedwald in the Wall Street Journal on July 6, 2013



Reviews of Dreams May Take You  2012

...Emily Asher's Garden Party, which is a deliberately prosaic name deviously calculated to describe a very exciting combo. In traditional jazz, the trombone comes closest to the human voice, although up to now it's rarely been cast as a distinctly female voice. On her new album, "Dreams May Take You," Ms. Asher plays with both grit and grace, cooing lovingly but firmly on Louis Armstrong's cautionary tale, "Someday You'll Be Sorry," then growling and barking like an obstinate chihuahua on the Latinate "Great Big Wall."

                        -Will Friedwald in the Wall Street Journal on May 25, 2012

(The trombone solo on Great Big Wall is played by the great Wycliffe Gordon) 


An excerpt from Ricky Riccardi's review, please scroll to the bottom of this page to read the entire essay.


These musicians have studied and pay tribute to the past masters in a variety of ways: on “Muskrat Ramble,” Kevin Dorn replicates Cliff Leeman’s drum break from Eddie Condon’s recording of “Beale Street Blues”; the vocal arrangement of “On the Sunny Side of the Street” is lifted directly from Tommy Dorsey’s recording with the Sentimentalists; a snatch of Dizzy Gillespie’s arrangement of  “Umbrella Man” makes its way into “Hey! Look Me Over” (and Gillespie was no moldy fig, proving the band has big ears). This is not repertory music filled with recreations of the past but these small glimpses illustrate that these musicians are comfortable building on what the master’s left them.
...
After the history lesson on “Ory’s Creole Trombone,” Asher settles down and spends the rest of the recording offering stirring examples of her many talents. As a trombonist, her tone is warm and smooth (perhaps best shown off on her duet with Gordon Webster on Louis Armstrong’s “Someday You’ll Be Sorry”) but she’s not afraid to mix it up in the ensembles, showing a natural gift for the joys of polyphonic improvisation. As a singer, Asher’s voice is unfailingly sweet and earnest, one created for music such as this. Her touching delivery of “Lullaby for a Little One” (written by her father, Rick Asher) is a particular highlight (especially for those with kids). And as a composer, both “Sweet Pea” (which sounds a bit like Duke Ellington’s “Saturday Night Function” as played on Sunday morning) and “Great Big Wall” (an exotic number inspired by a trip to Israel) are melodies that linger in the mind long after the CD has stopped spinning.

Asher is also a pro at pacing Dreams May Take You.  Too many albums consist of two tempos (fast and slow) ping-ponged back and forth from selection to selection. But Dreams May Take You is constantly changing its atmosphere: nods to Louis Armstrong on “Muskrat Ramble” and “Someday You’ll Be Sorry”; middle tempo, walking-and-swinging numbers like “Sweet Pea” and a perfectly paced “On the Sunny Side of the Street”; a two-beat country stroll through “You Are My Sunshine”; a full-blown New Orleans party atmosphere on “There’ll Be Some Changes Made”; and free-for-all romps on “Emperor Norton’s Hunch” and “Limehouse Blues” that illustrate the joyous abandon that made this music so popular in the first place.
                     
                        -Ricky Riccardi, Louis Armstrong Biographer and Archivist a the Louis Armstrong
                        House Museum December, 2012


(pacing credit goes largely to co-producer Jeff Jones "The Jedi Master")


The CD’s title comes from an Asher original — by Emily’s father — called LULLABY FOR A LITTLE ONE, on which Miss Asher sings with winsome charm. (And she knows when to leave an audience wanting more: the LULLABY is a delicious cameo, slightly over two minutes.) It’s followed by a New Orleans “second line” version of CHANGES MADE, which would cause the sedentary to start dancing. The original SWEET PEA is part cowboy-ballad, part rocking barcarolle, with touches of Fifties West Coast cool arranging. HEY, LOOK ME OVER is Emily’s childhood party piece — which begins in an easy waltz-time before morphing into sleek swing — that won me over when I saw her do it (with apt choreography) at Radegast....SOMEDAY YOU’LL BE SORRY, taken at a brisk clip, is another trombone-piano outing, very delicate in its earnestness, with a straight-from-the-shoulder vocal by Emily, taking the lyrics with a gentle seriousness that would have pleased its creator.

Nothing’s dull or forced on this CD: it’s one of those rare creations where you want to play it over again when it ends.

                                 -Michael SteinmanJazzLives, May 31, 2012. 


One of the pleasant developments on the current New York City area jazz scene is the revival of interest in classic jazz by many younger jazz musicians. One of the brightest stars to emerge from this scene is the impressive trombonist EMILY ASHER. For her initial album as a leader Dreams May Take You (Emily Asher – No Catalog Number), she has gathered Wycliffe Gordon on trombone and Sousaphone, Bria Skonberg and Philip Dizak on trumpets, Dan Levinson on tenor sax and clarinet, Will Anderson on alto sax, Nick Russo on guitar and banjo, Kelly Friesen and Rob Adkins on bass, Kevin Dorn and Rob Garcia on drums, and Gordon Webster on piano. These musicians are used in various combinations, all of them with fine results. Asher adds an occasional pleasant vocal with Skonberg joining in on the vocal fun for “On the Sunny Side of the Street.” The tunes are mostly what Louis Armstrong used to call “the good old good ones” like “There’ll Be Some Changes Made,” “Muskrat Ramble” and “Limehouse Blues.” Asher has included a couple of catchy originals, as well as a song written by her father in anticipation of the arrival of his first grandchild, “Lullaby for a Little One.” Asher has performed for NJJS several times now, and all of the fans that she has developed will certainly want to latch onto this joyous disc.

                     -Joe Lang for the Jersey Jazz Magazine June/July 2012


Thank you to all three of these gentleman for taking the time to listen to the album and write thoughtfully.  

If you are interested in reviewing DREAMS MAY TAKE YOU  Please contact MasherPress@gmail.com for a copy or simply stream all the tracks at emilyashersgardenparty.bandcamp.com

Reviews of Garden Party


Emily Asher certainly knows how to throw a party. And her brilliance isn’t a matter of laying in huge quantities of blue corn chips and IPA, nor is it because of those cookies she bakes. In fact, Emily comes to the party with little except her trombone, some sheet music, and her insistence that everyone have a good time and swing.

She accomplishes this nicely — and she’s also one of those musicians who seems to be growing and developing before our eyes . . . not that she was a novice when I first encountered her!  
See full post with videos here


                        -Michael Steinman, Jazz Lives, Oct. 13, 2011 

Interview with Emily on the role of Music Education:
Music Crossing Borders. Play It Forward:  
An MCB discussion on the role and influence of music education on music professionals today
Play It Forward is a forum for individuals who have been influenced by music throughout their lives to share their stories on how music education has shaped their experience as an educator and/or performer, as well as an individual.
“I’ve run four full marathons and many half marathons using the same skills with which I learned to play the Šulek Sonata or Grøndahl Concerto!”
Read the full interview:
http://musiccrossingborders.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/play-it-forward-emily-asher/

Podcast with Jonny Goodman for the First Annual Lower East Side Music Festival 8/9/12




December, 2012
Review of Emily Asher’s CD, Dreams May Take You

Ricky RiccardiLouis Armstrong Biographer and Archivist a the Louis Armstrong House Museum 


At the end of a romp through “Hey! Look Me Over” on Emily Asher’s new CD, Dreams May Take You, saxophonist Dan Levinson can be heard to mutter, “Not bad.”  It’s the understatement of the year, as what came before it—and what follows—is simply extraordinary hot jazz played by some of the finest young musicians devoted to keeping this music alive today.
The phrases “hot jazz” and “young musicians” might seem as incompatible as “peanut butter” and “dice” but it wasn’t always that way, and as this CD makes clear, it’s not that way today. But first, a quick  history lesson.

In the days before jazz became “Art” with a capital A, it was a social music, music for dancing, for dining, for drinking and for partying. Young people tend to partake in such activities so it only made sense that hot jazz became the soundtrack to their lives in the 1920s and 1930s. Even after World War II, when jazz was beginning to take a backseat to the popular crooners of the day like Frank Sinatra and Dick Haymes, hot, traditional, New Orleans-influenced jazz remained popular with young crowds in rowdy New York nightclubs like Central Plaza and Eddie Condon’s and on university campuses across the country. By the late 1950s, though, rock-and-roll had begun to take over as the music of choice for the younger generation. Jazz continued to move farther and farther away from the sounds of popular music, until it became a respected art form with a small audience. Traditional jazz survived but was mostly a niche, even ignored by the more mainstream jazz musicians and press.

But that’s not the case anymore. Gradually building in the last decade or so, traditional jazz is thriving once again with young jazz musicians (tired of Coltrane substitutions and eager for ensemble interplay) and almost more importantly, young listeners looking for lively, swinging music suitable for dancing and  listening to without a perquisite doctorate degree in musicology.

One listen through Dreams May Take You amply illustrates why this is: this is not museum piece music but rather something completely fresh and exciting, music that’s clearly fun to play for the musicians to play and fun for the disc’s listeners to experience.

Because traditional jazz has its share of passionate, detail-obsessed devotees (once dubbed “moldy figs” in the 1940s), there will probably be some hardened listeners out there with memories of Jack Teagarden, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet and Kid Ory clouding their brains, who might not think today’s hot jazz proponents really know the music. Well, that’s a wrong assumption to make; these musicians have studied and pay tribute to the past masters in a variety of ways: on “Muskrat Ramble,” Kevin Dorn replicates Cliff Leeman’s drum break from Eddie Condon’s recording of “Beale Street Blues”; the vocal arrangement of “On the Sunny Side of the Street” is lifted directly from Tommy Dorsey’s recording with the Sentimentalists; a snatch of Dizzy Gillespie’s arrangement of  “Umbrella Man” makes its way into “Hey! Look Me Over” (and Gillespie was no moldy fig, proving the band has big ears). This is not repertory music filled with recreations of the past but these small glimpses illustrate that these musicians are comfortable building on what the master’s left them.

As for trombonist Asher, she announces her arrival and shows off her credentials on the disc’s opening track, “Ory’s Creole Trombone.” This showpiece for New Orleans trombone pioneer Kid Ory is not an easy one (I once heard Asher exclaim before a live performance of this number, “See you on the other side!”) but the Seattle native handles it deftly, surely making the Kid proud, not only with her virtuosic solo statements but also with her superb work in the ensembles. In the song’s coda, Asher humorously performs a mini “History of the Trombone,” quoting Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” Henry Fillmore’s “Lassus Trombone” and Tommy Dorsey’s theme, “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” in the span of about 15 seconds.

(But the glory of Dreams May Take You is you don’t need to know any of the tunes I mentioned in the last two paragraphs to enjoy it. The older generations of hot musicians did not create music for specialists and historians and neither does Asher’s crew.)

After the history lesson on “Ory’s Creole Trombone,” Asher settles down and spends the rest of the recording offering stirring examples of her many talents. As a trombonist, her tone is warm and smooth (perhaps best shown off on her duet with Gordon Webster on Louis Armstrong’s “Someday You’ll Be Sorry”) but she’s not afraid to mix it up in the ensembles, showing a natural gift for the joys of polyphonic improvisation. As a singer, Asher’s voice is unfailingly sweet and earnest, one created for music such as this. Her touching delivery of “Lullaby for a Little One” (written by her father, Rick Asher) is a particular highlight (especially for those with kids). And as a composer, both “Sweet Pea” (which sounds a bit like Duke Ellington’s “Saturday Night Function” as played on Sunday morning) and “Great Big Wall” (an exotic number inspired by a trip to Israel) are melodies that linger in the mind long after the CD has stopped spinning.

Asher is also a pro at pacing Dreams May Take You.  Too many albums consist of two tempos (fast and slow) ping-ponged back and forth from selection to selection. But Dreams May Take You is constantly changing its atmosphere: nods to Louis Armstrong on “Muskrat Ramble” and “Someday You’ll Be Sorry”; middle tempo, walking-and-swinging numbers like “Sweet Pea” and a perfectly paced “On the Sunny Side of the Street”; a two-beat country stroll through “You Are My Sunshine”; a full-blown New Orleans party atmosphere on “There’ll Be Some Changes Made”; and free-for-all romps on “Emperor Norton’s Hunch” and “Limehouse Blues” that illustrate the joyous abandon that made this music so popular in the first place.

The album’s other cast of characters is mighty impressive. Wycliffe Gordon, a mentor of sorts to Asher, shows up to whoop, holler and generally raise hell on “There’ll Be Some Changes Made,” “Great Big Wall” and “Limehouse Blues,” both on trombone and sousaphone. Bria Skonberg morphs into the 21st century Louis Armstrong at times, especially in the rideout chorus to “On the Sunny Side of the Street”; drummers Rob Garcia and Kevin Dorn illustrate that press rolls didn’t die with Paul Barbarin; reedmen Dan Levinson and Will Anderson also score on their various outings; everyone, from top to bottom, sounds like they’re having a ball and that feeling is contagious.

Though the album doesn’t contain anything that remotely resembles a dud, for me, the track I keep coming back to is “Emperor Norton’s Hunch,” a Lu Watters composition I wasn’t aware of until the modern traditionalists (oxymoron?) have started including it in their repertoire. From the opening, arranged introduction until the final charge after the last drum break, I thought I was listening to a prime Eddie Condon record from the 1950s. The rhythm section kicks everyone along with almost frightening intensity while each of the horns absolutely nail the arranged and improvised portions, resulting in ensemble-generated ecstasy. It’s probably the single most exciting new track I’ve heard in 2012.
That one track alone illustrates all the quality that spoke to young people in the 1930s and 1940s and is speaking to them again in clubs around Brooklyn and Greenwich Village today: music that is full of passion, swing, abandon, intensity, melody. Those qualities will always remain timeless which is why hot jazz will never die. And in the hands of Emily Asher and the other musicians on Dreams May Take You, the music is alive, well and swinging like mad. 

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