This is the debut release for a collective ensemble that has been playing together, as conditions allow, for years. 

In 2013, when clarinetist-saxophonist Peter Kuhn decided to officially return to the music scene after 27 years away from it with a concert event in San Diego, he assembled an ensemble of old and new friends and dubbed it Dependent Origination. This was a direct reference to the Buddhist concept of manifestation also known as interdependent co-arising and a sign that Kuhn was integrating all aspects of his life in this new music, emphasizing the importance of the supportive collective energy of his special musical friends. Among those he recruited for the event were longtime colleague and loyal friend baritone saxophonist Dave Sewelson, who to flew in from New York, and his Dharma brother, the highly regarded drummer-percussionist Alex Cline, who drove up from Los Angeles. Dave was instrumental to Kuhn’s return to music with encouragement and the gift of a bass clarinet, as was Alex Cline, ordained with Kuhn in the Plum Village Zen Tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh and friend since high school.

The band known as Dependent Origination has included a number of notable participants over the years, including Hugh Ragin and Wayne Horvitz. But Kuhn, Cline and Sewelson have remained at the core, providing a stable nucleus that is grounded in a shared vision for musical liberation and ever deepening brotherhood. In recent years the group has essentially stabilized with the addition of cornetist Dan Clucas and bassist Scott Walton,

This quintet lineup has had the opportunity to play and tour together on the West Coast of the United States and has further

developed its remarkable chemistry and rapport.

This set, released as their debut CD on FMR Records, was recorded on November 6, 2016 and represents the group’s collective energy at its most spirited, intense, and joyous. Playing before an appreciative and enthusiastically supportive audience at the Center for the Arts in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles as part of the monthly Open Gate Theatre Sunday evening concerts series, a series of unusual and challenging music curated by Cline which, together with his partner in the venture Will Salmon, has been continuing for over twenty years, the quintet demonstrated that evening where its shared musical manifestations can go with a potent, dynamic, and varied offering, all of which, like all its sets of music, is completely freely improvised. With no prior discussion of musical direction or parameters, the group simply begins playing, and their collective musical instincts, experience, ideas, influences, sensitivity, and energy are immediately engaged, the music unfolding in the present

both veteran artists

of exceptional ability, versatility, and sensitivity perfectly attuned to the group's

collaborative musical identity.

moment in a spontaneous and purely honest manner. The result is music that takes the musicians and the listeners on an enthralling sonic journey in which a full spectrum of creative jazz and improvised music’s deep, grand, and noble traditions can be discerned. With each distinctive accomplished artist contributing his own unique voice to the unified musical amalgam, the band emerges as a captivating representation of the concept that serves as its name: Dependent Origination, where each present element is dependent on one another in order to manifest, and do so beautifully.

1. Aspiration 38.04
2. The Nibbler 3.55
3. The Way Out (Is In) 8:48

Peter Kuhn - Bb and bass clarinet, tenor saxophone Dave Sewelson - baritone and sopranino saxophone Dan Clucas – cornet
Scott Walton – bass

Alex Cline – drums and percussion

Recorded live at the Open Gate Theatre Sunday evening concerts series, Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock, CA, 6 November 2016
Engineer: Wayne Peet; assistant engineer: Ellington Peet; helper: Jonathan Saxon

Edited, mixed & mastered by Wayne Peet at Newzone Studio, Los Angeles, CA

All compositions by Kuhn, Cline, Clucas, Sewelson & Walton ©2017 Dependent Origination Music ASCAP