Photo by Laurie Samet
Dan Wilkins - tenor saxophone | Jon Ballantyne - piano | Adrian Moring - bass | Bill Goodwin - drums
w/ Chris Rogers - trumpet/flugel horn and Griffin Woodard - bass clarinet
Featured Article about the Dan Wilkins Quartet -
https://www.tnonline.com/20230914/dan-wilkins-to-bask-in-the-moonglow-in-jim-thorpe/
Liner Notes for Moonglow
by Dan Wilkins
The Deer Head Inn has long been a central hub for arts, specifically jazz in Eastern PA, opening as a jazz venue in the 1950s where John Coates Jr. would become the house pianist and a magnet for a colorful mix of established musicians. Phil Woods, Rick Chamberlain, Bob Dorough, David Liebman, Bill Goodwin and many others would also make a home in and around the Delaware Water Gap, where they helped to cultivate a thriving arts community and audience with a surprisingly eclectic variety of music. For me, the Deer Head Inn became a place of solace and expression, where straight-edged bebop, harmonically and rhythmically dense modern jazz, songbook tradition, wild free jazz, and downhome country could somehow coexist without pointing fingers. More than that, the masters challenged each other to supplant the mundane and reach for something greater. That's the ethos that formed my musical world.
I've long admired Adrian Moring's approach to bass playing, and when he told me he planned to move to Pennsylvania for a while, I knew we'd be playing music together. After a short while, we found ourselves playing trio with our mutual mentor, Bill Goodwin, building an adventurous collection of music from various streams. What you hear on Moonglow is a combination of pieces arranged and adapted from trio to quartet by Adrian and myself, and new arrangements by myself conceived for quartet with guests. Jon Ballantyne completes our quartet at the piano, with Chris Rogers joining us on trumpet and flugelhorn, and the youngest member of the band, Griffin Woodard on bass clarinet.
Special thank you to our producer Richard Burton, engineer Kent Heckman, and art designer Kathy Ridl for all their help with this project, and to Bill Goodwin, whom we all admire and feel tremendously grateful and proud to play music with.
