About Me
Big News!
Lobster Leaps In , the first new recording by The Microscopic Septet since 1988, will be release in September on Cuneiform Records .
Find out the True History of Lobster Leaps In
including mp3s of ancient live recordings from places that no longer exist!
The Micros will be touring again in November 2009.
"Oh, how we've missed the Microscopic Septet! Back in the early 1980s, when jazz, on all aesthetic levels, seemed to be resolidifying its connection with its heritage, these wild and wooly virtuosos leapt into the breach between "outside" and "inside" jazz and made a cheerful shambles. They were as clever as the Beatles, as subversive as Captain Beefheart, as antic as Spike Jones.
Did I mention that they were – and are – more fun than any other well-dressed jazz ensemble in the western world? ...fans still light candles for their return. ...Hurry back, fellows, won't you? The uptown neoclassicists still have a lot to learn from you downtown pranksters."
 â€“ Gene Seymour, Newsday: The Long Island Newspaper, June 13, 2000
"Posterity is going to remember the Microscopic Septet as one of the best bands of the 1980s."
  – Francis Davis, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Aug. 25, 1988
The music of The Microscopic Septet was the sound of jazz in 20th C. America: all of it, from Ellington to Ayler, bebop to Zorn, Dixieland to experimental, captured in a microcosm. It distilled the essence of jazz as a popular music into a sound that swung, a music that was intelligent, sometimes smart-aleck, and always good clean fun. Optimistic and upbeat, full of innocent confidence, the Microscopic Septet captured not only the sound of jazz, but also the sound – or soundtrack – of 20th Century America. No wonder, then, that when National Public Radio (NPR) needed a new theme song for one of its most popular shows, "Fresh Air, with Terry Gross", broadcast to every home in America, it asked this band to compose the tune and has used it ever since.
Read the rest of this terrific article by Joyce Nalewajk of Cuneiform Records, which provides a historical context to the music of the Microscopic Septet.
Visit the Microscopic Septet website.
Watch the Micros perform Twilight Time Zone at The Iron Horse in Northampton MA in 2006 on their recent reunion tour.
Purchase the Cuneiform Micros reissues directly from Cuneiform Records.
Join the Microscopic Septet email mailing list.
