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"One of Downbeat's top 100 of 2025!!"
 
Released April 2025
City life is a complicated state both of being and of mind. It’s a life of contradictions, of opposites meeting, mingling, merging and diverging in a space both massive and confined. It’s a wide spectrum of colors, flavors, cultures, pastimes and ideas, and trombonist Michael Dease and composer Gregg Hill aim to capture all of it in a wide musical lens.
 
“City Life is a combination of what Gregg and I do best,” Dease offers by way of description. “He interprets: the comings and goings, the highs and lows all around him. And me, I'm an expression seeker, a sound adventurer. We’re yin and yang.”
 
Michael Dease has fully earned his stature as one of the great trombonists and jazz figures of these times. His formidableness on the instrument, matched by his pursuit of inspired musical challenges and robust partnerships, is fully on display in the double CD, City Life, his third album devoted to the music of composer Gregg Hill. Teaming with two of the more powerful voices in music—bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts—Dease devotes Disc One to a kinetically charged trio environment, capturing the gritty side of City Life by sparring freely with his trio mates while they masterfully cohabitate the flow of time. Disc Two adds saxophonist Nicole Glover and pianist Geoffrey Keezer to the soundscape, which may reflect a sophisticated counterview, with each disc capturing a perspective of the contradictions that make up City Life.

"Dease modernizes the style significantly, energizes it, and gives it a new dimension. He skillfully handles both the most lively and the most poetic..." Paris Move
 
Sharel Cassity - flute, alto sax (3)
Virginia MacDonald - clarinet
Rudresh Mahanthappa - alto sax
Jason Hainsworth - tenor sax
Matt White - trumpet
Michael Dease - trombone, bari sax
Nanami Haruta - trombone
Bill Cunliffe - piano, Rhodes
Katie Thiroux - bass
Colleen Clark - drumset
Gwendolyn Dease - marimba, percussion
Gregg Hill - compositions & producer
 
DISC ONE - TRIO
  1  Willow Walks In  5:03
  2  City Life  6:29
  3  Danger Zone  5:05
  4  Movie Theme  4:53
  5  Sweet Georgia Gillespie  4:15
  6  Double Bill  5:14
  7  Claxilever  4:26
  8  Catalyst  7:16
  9  Say What!?  4:41
10  Movie Theme (Reprise)  6:11

Compositions by Gregg Hill, except:
(5) J.J. Johnson; (9) Sharel Cassity

DISC TWO - QUINTET
 1  Tea Time  6:08
 2  The Classic II  7:11
 3  Grave Concerns  6:31
 4  Mr. Hurt  6:59
 5  Rainy Afternoon  5:43
 6  Enigma  6:16
 7  Skittles  6:03
 8  Blues for Herb  4:50
 9  Lafayette Square  4:56

Compositions by Gregg Hill, except: (3,7) Michael Dease;
(4) Gregory Tardy; (6) J.J. Johnson; (8) Emily Remler