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Saxophonist Michael Blake reimagines Halloween classics with this seasoned New York Quartet. Costume or not, here we come!

Michael Blake ~ Tenor and Soprano Saxes
Tony Scherr ~ Bass
Marius van den Brink ~ Piano
Michael Sarin ~ Drums

New York saxophonist MICHAEL BLAKE stakes out fresh territory in holiday jazz with Halloween Tales. While the genre has typically belonged to the winter holidays, Blake’s new release claims the mystery, humor and cinematic atmosphere of Halloween and the harvest season instead, channeled through inventive arrangements and inspired improvisation.

Joined by Gary Versace on piano, Ben Allison on bass and Michael Sarin on drums, Blake leads a classic quartet lineup as a deliberate choice meant to echo the instrumentation of the holiday jazz records that shaped his own listening. The chemistry among the musicians runs deep: Blake and Allison first played together in New York in the late 1980s and went on to collaborate for years in the Jazz Composers Collective, while Sarin and Versace each logged extensive time with Blake and Allison across various bands and tours in the decades since.

A Montreal-born, Vancouver-raised saxophonist, Blake has called New York home since 1986 and has built one of the more wide-ranging discographies in modern jazz, moving fluidly between straight-ahead and experimental settings. The New York Times called him “an endlessly engaging improviser, and an inquisitive one.” He spent a decade touring and recording with John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards and has led his own bands and projects steadily since, including a long-running collaborative relationship with Ben Allison, who also mixed and mastered Halloween Tales. His 2023 release Dance of the Mystic Bliss landed at No. 3 on The Guardian’s list of the year’s best jazz albums, following Combobulate (2022) and Tiddy Boom (2014), both of which drew similar critical notice. Halloween Tales marks a return to the classic quartet format that first brought Blake wide attention on his 2002 album Elevated.