contrabass guitar / double bass
new york city
Steve Millhouse “The Unwinding” release
news
Steve Millhouse’s Trio recording is available now SteepleChase Records.
Physical copies are available internationally and for download on all streaming sites.
Liner notes by Steve Swallow and Gary Fukushima.
Included are two original compositions as well as songs from Monk, Steve Swallow, Horace Silver, Benny Golson and Sam Jones. Featuring Rich Perry - tenor saxophone & Eric Halvorson - drums. CD
upcoming shows
press
[Translation] "New York-based bassist Steve Millhouse is the owner of a splendid technique that plays rhythm and solo parts simultaneously through a 6-string contrabass guitar. His debut work, released in 2023, is a masterpiece that reproduces various jazz classics with his own splendid improvisation, and contains 7 attractive works including 'I Mean You', 'Soulville', and 'Whisper Not'. In particular, the clear sound quality of 24bit/96khz recording provides a higher level of satisfaction."
Steve Millhouse is a veteran New York and Broadway bassist known for championing the
electric bass in jazz and for his chordal mastery on his Fodera 6-string Contrabass Guitar.
His latest trio date with tenor saxophonist Rich Perry and drummer Eric Halvorson furthers
both causes considerably. The unit deftly visits such jazz standards as Benny Golson’s
“Whisper Not,” Thelonious Monk’s “I Mean You,” and Horace Silver’s “Soulville,”
with Millhouse chording for the heads, walking for Perry’s solos, and taking his own
solo flights with the help of Perry’s guide tones. He gives a nod to his instrument’s history with covers of Steve
Swallow’s “Falling Grace” and Sam Jones’ “Seven Minds” — the former buffeted by his bold chord clusters all
over the fingerboard, the latter finding him utilizing 4ths to capture the sound of Cedar Walton’s piano voicings
on the original. Most inspiring, however, are Millhouse’s two originals: On the comfortably swinging “I Don’t Know
Yet,” he underpins his melody (expressively interpreted by Perry) with fresh-sounding three-note block chords, as
Halvorson freely fills the open spaces. And, he introduces the title track via an ear-grabbing fingerstyle bass-and-
chordal figure in 6/8 that unfolds into a memorable Perry-rendered melody over Millhouse’s angular chordal clinic.
–Chris Jisi
コントラバス・ギターが大活躍するモダン・ジャズ
Modern Jazz with active Contrabass Guitar
ニールス・ペデルセンやロン・マクルーアなどアップライト奏者のアルバムを数多く出してきた老舗レーベル“スティープルチェイス”から、
コントラバス・ギターがメインの作品がリリースされるとは時代も変わった。とはいえ演奏は伝統的なモダン・ジャズの範疇に入るもので、
レパートリーにもセロニアス・モンク作（①）、ベニー・ゴルソン作（⑦）といった古典が含まれている。コクのあるサックスやドラムスの響きの間を、
コード奏法も取り入れた6弦が縦横無尽に動き回る形だ。高速パッセージによるサックスとのユニゾンも②や⑥で冴えわたっており、
“モダン・ジャズにおけるエレベの在り方”を示す一作として推薦したい。（原田和典）
The times have changed since the long-established label "SteepleChase", which has
released many albums of upright players such as Niels Pedersen and Ron McClure,
will release a work centered on contrabass guitar.
However, the performance falls within the category of traditional modern jazz, and the repertoire includes classics such as Thelonious Monk (①) and Benny Golson (⑦). Between the rich saxophone and drum sounds, the 6 strings, which incorporates chord playing techniques, move around freely. The high-speed passages in unison with the saxophone are also brilliant in 2 and 6, and I would like to recommend it as a work that shows “the way elebe (electric bass) should be in modern jazz.'' (Kazunori Harada)
about
After a very long career of playing bass with many different artists, touring the world, recording, playing Broadway shows etc., Steve has formed two trios of his own to showcase his own unique chordal and soloistic style of playing on the Contrabass Guitar. One being the Steve Millhouse Trio comprised of contrabass guitar, tenor saxophone and drums playing a mixture of Steve’s original compositions as well as songs from the great jazz composers. The first performance of the Trio was in Tokyo, Japan in February 2020. After a hiatus during the pandemic, Steve resumed performing with the Trio in April 2022 and the debut recording “The Unwinding” was released February 2023 on SteepleChase Records featuring Rich Perry on tenor saxophone and Eric Halvorson on drums with liner notes by Steve Swallow and Gary Fukushima.
Steve began playing with his second group in May of 2022, the Steve Millhouse Cinema Trio which draws from the vast body of musical work written for the cinema. It features Allen Farnham on piano and Eric Halvorson on drums playing their own arrangements of music from some of the greatest composers in the history of cinema including Henry Mancini, Michel Legrand, Johnny Mandel, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Jerome Kern, Sting, Disney and beyond. The arrangements are both an homage to the brilliant original scores of the past with a fresh new treatment and perspective.
Between 2010 and 2015 he toured the world with international star Ute Lemper. He played on her CD “Forever: The Love Poems of Pablo Neruda” released in 2013 and subsequent tour including a live DVD from the legendary Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, Spain. The tour also played some of the other iconic venues of the world including the main hall of the Sydney Opera House, SF Jazz, the Sala São Paulo and a TV appearance in São Paolo Brazil. He also recorded her CD “The 9 Secrets” released in 2015.
Steve worked extensively on Broadway since 2007 to 2023 most recently playing electric and double bass for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He’s also played Elf at the Theater at Madison Square Garden; It Shoulda Been You in 2015; the 2015 Pippin tour in Tokyo Japan; the Broadway revivals of Pippin in 2013 and Godspell in 2011; the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular for five seasons; shows at the Daegu International Musical Festival in Daegu, South Korea in ’11 and ’12; and played for many other Broadway shows in NYC and Broadway tours around the US. Steve most recently played a tour of Dreamgirls in the US, Shanghai, China and Tokyo, Japan in late 2019 until February 2020. He has recently been touring with Jeremy Stolle and the Unreachable Stars in cities all across the US as well as nineteen cities throughout China in 2017 and 2018.
Steve has also performed in concert with a very long list of recording artists and Broadway stars, film stars and TV stars. He has played on Grammy nominated recordings; The Original Broadway Cast Recording of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and It Shoulda Been You; The New Broadways Cast Recording of Pippin and Godspell; many local and national TV jingles and on many other artist’s recordings. Steve, from touring throughout the world, became an oenophile many years ago and since 2016 has owned a boutique fine wine shop in Greenwich, Connecticut called Wine Wise in addition to his busy music career.
steve millhouse trio
After many years of touring, recording and playing all types of gigs with hundreds of artists, Steve started this trio to showcase his own style of bass playing, compositions and his interpretation of some less frequently played jazz classics. With the weight of melody, accompanying and soloing so evenly distributed, the choice of personnel was crucial.. Rich Perry (tenor saxophone) and Eric Halvorson (drums) draw from their experiences playing with so many different musicians at the highest level to bring a tremendous creative presence as well as their own signature sound and style that collectively shapes this trio into something unique and exciting.
“The Unwinding”
Track Listing
I Mean You
Soulville
The Unwinding
I Don’t Know Yet
Falling Grace
Seven Minds
Whisper Not
Steve Millhouse “The Unwinding” now available on Steeplechase Records
The Unwinding is a collection of seven jazz pieces, two written by Millhouse, with the rest arranged to suit his own unique format of tenor saxophone, drums and six-string electric bass.
Millhouse has played and studied jazz since he was 15 years old, and he has long been infatuated by those who defined that genre on his instrument: Jaco Pastorius, Stanley Clarke, Steve Swallow and Anthony Jackson to name just a few.
It is apparent almost immediately into the first track of Monk’s classic tune, “I Mean You,” that there is something different and compelling about the trio’s sound. Much of it can be traced to the polyphonic textures Millhouse is able to achieve on his six-string. He has played that unique instrument since 1990, but there weren’t many opportunities to unlock its full potential for him until now.
Millhouse explores this texture (on what Jackson has dubbed “the contrabass guitar”) within the two original compositions he wrote for this album. The title track, “The Unwinding,” begins with a syncopated bass ostinato alternating between roots and chord tones. The harmonies continue off and on throughout the form underneath Perry’s expressive treatment of the melody. On “I Don’t Know Yet,” Millhouse employs three-note block chords in a slow hemiola rhythm ala Coltrane’s “Equinox,” paced expertly by Eric Halvorson’s active drumming.
Elsewhere, Millhouse demonstrates other facets of his bass prowess, doubling with Perry the intricate line in the outgoing shout chorus in Horace Silver’s “Soulville.” On Sam Jones’ “Seven Minds,” he is somehow able to recreate the essence of the fourth-voicings of both pianist Cedar Walton and the entire horn ensemble of bassist Jones’ fiery 1978 version.
“Falling Grace” is the most well-known composition by Swallow, who is one of the most well known jazz electric bassists, and the tune was an easy choice by Millhouse to include on his album. “He is one of my main inspirations as a composer, and playing electric bass in this genre, his playing is absolutely musical, sensitive, intense and filled with humor—just as is his personality!” he says of Swallow.
Speaking of which, another benefit of this album is to hear for an extended time the original personality that belongs to saxophonist Perry. For over four decades now, he has been lauded by fellow musicians as one of the great New York saxophonists alive today, evidenced by his appearance as a sideman on over 80 albums, including a prominent chair in the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra (from the time of Thad Jones and Mel Lewis) and the Maria Schneider Orchestra. We should not fail to mention that he also has 24 albums to his name as a leader.
This album bodes well for things to come.
Gary Fukushima, December 2022
In the late 1960s, deeply excited by the possibilities I was finding in the electric bass, I was sure it would rapidly supplant the acoustic bass in jazz, much as the acoustic had displaced the tuba many years before. I was wrong, but what has happened is no less remarkable: I have seen a mountain moved slowly by the persistent efforts of some remarkable players.
This album shines as an example. Steve Millhouse has formidable technique and, more important, he's using it to help define and refine what the electric bass can do to refresh jazz music. I was wrong, but I haven’t been disappointed; the electric bass is taking its place in jazz with all deliberate haste. Steve is offering new energy and insight to this challenge. Onward!
-Steve Swallow
“THE UNWINDING is a great vehicle to get your name and “sound” out there! What impresses me most is the clarity and the feeling of your playing in your lines and the chordal embellishments. At times, it sounds more than a trio. Rich is amazing and Eric plays powerfully. The program is strong, too! You pay homage to the Master composers covering such a broad spectrum with ease and confidence. BRAVO”
steve millhouse cinema trio
After many years of touring, recording and playing all types of gigs with hundreds of artists in all genres, Steve has formed two of his own trios to showcase his own style of bass playing and composition. The Steve Millhouse Cinema Trio draws from the vast body of musical work written for the cinema. It features Allen Farnham on Piano, Eric Halvorson on Drums and Steve Millhouse on Contrabass Guitar playing their own arrangements of music from some of the greatest composers in the history of cinema including Henri Mancini, Michel Legrand, Johnny Mandel, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Jerome Kern, Sting to Disney and beyond. The arrangements are both an homage to the brilliant original scores of the past with a fresh new treatment and perspective.
videos
Some selections for your listening and viewing pleasure!
“Falling Grace”
Performed by: Steve Millhouse
Written by: Steve Swallow
“You Must Believe in Spring”
Performed by: Steve Millhouse
Written by: Michel Legrand
“Moon River”
Performed by: Steve Millhouse
Written by: Henry Mancini
“Sister Sadie”
Performed by: Steve Millhouse
Written by: Horace Silver
