Arthur Kell Quartet - Victoria (Live in Germany) (2009)

I was fortunate to be able to have the last two concerts of a tour in May 2008 recorded for broadcast by German radio stations: Deutschlandfunk in Köln and Sudwestrundfunk in Karlsruhe.

But, returning home with only the live mixes of two sonically different recordings, I set my sights on starting over in the studio to get it right. Months later, friends encouraged me to take the live recordings off the shelf and listen again. They were right! I found them increasingly infectious and hard to deny. In the end, there was no editing or remixing, just a mastering session.

Almost all of the touring I’ve done with my own group in the last five years has been in Europe. So, I’m really happy to have a CD that captures the spirit of all those tours. There’s never going to be a substitute for a working band.

Originally a collection of my compositions about various people, I settled on a title from the lead cut Victoria and Her Sisters. As described below in the liner notes for each song, it represented a completely unexpected and welcome change in my life but one that I had to really fight for. The cover and most of the other photographs are of hand-carved figures from the interior of an abandoned house that I stumbled upon

Arthur Kell - bass
Loren Stillman - alto saxophone
Brad Shepik - guitar
Joe Smith - drums