THE HUB an Explosive mix of New York
Mooseburgzeitung,Germany, November 3, 2001

By Reinhard Kneiper

Apart from the very few, who took shelter as they were worried about the state of their eardrums, the other jazz friends who attended last Wednesday’s performance at the Stag’s Head Music Bar (Hirschwirt) were in complete agreement that the thunderstorm which they had just witnessed on stage that evening deserved to be labeled as a magical moment. Three young Amercian musicians, all under 25, had decided to stop in Mooseburg as part of their European tour. This tour included many impressive venues that offered THE HUB the opportunity to detonate their explosive mix of New York.

THE HUB is an up and coming trio consisting of the Californian saxophonist Dan Magay, and with the New Yorkers Tim Dahl on electric bass and Sean Noonan on drums. Although still considered by the music business to be an “insider tip” the band has already built up an intricate network on European clubs, concerts, and festivals. During the last four weeks their road tour has literally taken them to every corner of Europe by car. Not to mention the enormous effort put in by their well known “workaholic” Sean Noonan who, without the help of any professional management, organized the band’s European tour from his hometown in New York, a tour stretching from Sweden to Portugal, from Prague to Paris and from Dresden to Mooseburg.

The effort to categorize their own music, which have longer compositions but at the same time is also spontaneous and novel, brought a smile to the faces of the three sympathetic musicians. “Call it what you want! We call it young jazz” was their answer. The music isn’t from the renowned New York jazz clubs. It’s an exciting mixture of punk rock, power jazz and classical avant-garde. An explosive mixture that the trio molded together during a short period when the three exceptional musicians were hired to play at a gala-dinner event in Florida. During the day, when they had nothing better to do with their time, they sat together and challenged one another to play new and adventurous instrumental arrangements.

The result is a sound that causes your hearing to go into a spin. As loud as a rocket blasting from Cape Canaveral, clear as the sky over the equator, and as dynamic as the traffic on 5th Avenue, THE HUB is not exactly music for a dreamy evening in front of the fireplace. Their albums “Vandalism” and “Accident” didn’t exactly get their names by chance. Playing their own compositions “Big Mouth”, “Screaming Contest”, and “Over and Out” almost caused some of the music fans at the “Stags Head Bar” to climb up onto their bar stools! Their musical equipment had to be reduced to a bare minimum for travel purposes and therefore consisted of a bass and snare drum, a hi-hat, two hanging cymbals and a gong, together with an electric bass with three foot pedals and an alto saxophone. As a result this directly reflected in the purity of their sound. No need for any lulling melodies or gimmicks, just and uncompromising polyphony with three instruments, well insinuated breaks and unforgiving eruptions together with some lyrical unison passages, which extenuated the precise arrangements of the band. That was the mix that created an extatic atmosphere in the “Stag’s Head” last Wednesday evening. After the band’s stereotype “thank you” for each of their own pieces there was really only one answer in the end from the crowd, “Encore-Encore.”

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