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Tenor saxophonist Peter Fraize’s second CD, Third Attention, features five original tunes by his trio and one unique cover: the Bee Gees’ ballad “How Deep Is Your Love.”
“It was one of those songs that, whenever it would come on the radio dial, I wouldn’t flip the station,” Fraize says. “I was thinking of trying to do it as a bossa nova, and once I started messing around with it the whole Ellington thing came out.”
Fraize, the director of jazz studies at George Washington University, put out his multilayered debut, You St., with his quintet; but he went for a stripped-down sound on Third Attention. “I just wanted to document the trio, since we’ve been doing it for four-and-a-half years now on Mondays” at State of the Union, Fraize explains. When he isn’t hosting the weekly jam session at the U Street club, Fraize gigs with Greg Hatza’s Organization and the Emptys. And recently, he even played Fresh Fields: “I’m on an East Coast supermarket tour,” he jokes.
Fraize’s new quintet plays One Step Down March 11. Third Attention is available from Union Records, 2312A Ashmead Place NW, Washington, DC 20009. (CP)