On the heels of making his scoring debut in the Netflix Spy Ops TV show + featured in both Amazon & Spotify’s “Best Jazz of 2022”, internationally recognized saxophonist & composer Mike Casey announces 8th release in 7 years, Public Access: WPAA TV Session.
Recorded during his trio’s first post-COVID tour via on-air public broadcast television in Wallingford, CT one month before Mike moved across the US to Los Angeles, the 4-track EP debuts 4 new original compositions, and paired with his 7th (Live) EP In The Before: Live at the Side Door – which was recorded live at their final pre-COVID show late February 2020 – marks a unique “before COVID/after COVID” musical snapshot of Mike & his trio’s development at a tumultuous time in world history.
With a distinct take on the less common sax/bass/drum trio format, Mike Casey and his trio have been evolving steadily since first beginning to play together regularly in 2012 as students at the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz (Hartt School of Music / University of Hartford, CT), 5 years before their first recordings, 2017’s “The Sound of Surprise: Live at The Side Door” + 2018’s “Stay Surprising: Live at The Side Door” follow up (both recorded from the same 2016 live show).
Since then, the trio has been finalists in the largest ensemble based competition in the jazz world – DC Jazz Festivals’ “DCJazzPrix” 2020 – with recognition from BBC Radio 6, daily rotation on Jazz FM, NPR, Huffington Post, extensive editorial support at Apple Music, Spotify’s “Best Jazz of 2020”, Vevo, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, national radio in two dozen plus countries, tens of millions of streams, and even featured on Star Wars’ official playlists, toured the Kennedy Center & BRIC Jazz Fest among many other highlights.
“Listening back now, there is definitely an urgency in the music, it feels like maybe we subconsciously felt that it might have been the last time we were going to play together, at least regularly, for a while, since I was moving to Los Angeles about one month later,” says Casey.
“I’m very proud of how much we’ve grown together over the years – we’ve developed a lot of trust together as a band. I emerged from covid with about 20 new compositions I was trying to record. Some we got at this TV taping, others we got days later at Firehouse 12 studio in New Haven which will be released at a later time. In any case, to come back ‘cold’ with so much new music to learn was quite the thrilling challenge for all of us,” especially since all 3 of us were actually recovering from covid about a month prior.
