Stuff I Heard, Troy Roberts

With the release of Stuff I Heard (Toy Robot Music) – his 12th album as a leader – Roberts circles back to his beginnings with elements of both, the Troy Roberts Quartet and NU-JIVE, as well as film score-esque pieces compositionally reminiscent of his 2009 release, The XenDen Suite. But make no mistake, the result is conceptually unlike anything he has ever recorded. The album features all original compositions with an element not yet showcased on Roberts’ previous albums; the collection in nature is an ensemble album, only this time recorded with Roberts helming multiple soprano, alto and tenor saxophones, as well as acoustic and electric basses, along with longtime live performance compadre Jimmy MacBride on drums. The album is born from Roberts’ continuous creative momentum; he explains, “My first compositional rule of thumb is to capture my ideas by singing them into my phone. Every so often, I transcribe and save them to a folder on my hard drive called ‘Stuff I Heard’ for later development. All my albums are essentially the fruits of these seeds.”

TROY ROBERTS – soprano, alto & tenor saxophones,
acoustic bass, electric bass

JIMMY MACBRIDE – drums