“Youthandageia was a project that arose out of a vision that the youthful Danny Meyer and Sam Yulsman had about sharing music in a free improvised context with jazz veterans Kent McLagan and Art Lande. The four musicians went into the studio and simply played for 3 hours with very little discussed before or afterward. The result is this CD which is made up of very focused and concise pieces, each with a specific mood and character that feature the varied and unique talents of all four players. There is a coherent group sound and stylistic integrity that pervades the whole enterprise. We hope that you enjoy this improvised journey and make of it what you will.”

“You should think of “Never Say That Again To Me” as an open invitation to take part in improvisational music as an ongoing process of collaboration. The sounds you hear aren’t any sort of end point or end result. They’re not a finished product or a final take. Our collaboration started long before we recorded this album and will last for many years to come (I can only hope). It’s a process without a goal grander than itself.

This of course is only to say that the beauty, comedy, and ass kicking I hope you’ll hear isn’t some sort of abstracted, intellectualized, Kantian attempt at art for arts sake. Music as process means music that doesn’t attempt to do anything in the moment of its creation: it is only a gritty extension of a way of life…gritty in that beautifully gritty way that any life copes with its blemishes and imperfections.

I leave it up to you to decide what our way of life amounts to and I imagine some of you probably will dismiss it as utterly insane. This is probably true. But I would be selling us short if I didn’t at least say that that Art, Kent and Danny’s ability to listen deeply to what I’m saying has empowered me to create as an artist. If listening is the stuff of collaboration than this is a collaboration that I will always feel honored to be a part of.

Maybe then, you should think of this as our invitation to listen and feel empowered to join in on the process of collaboration…and maybe, to just yell at the top of your lungs in the direction of your speakers: “Never say that again to me!”
”