Pat Irwin & J. Walter Hawkes at Troost

The avant-jazz/Americana duo of Pat Irwin on guitar and J. Walter Hawkes on trombone celebrates the release of their new album Wide Open Sky

"Multi-instrumentalists Pat Irwin and J. Walter Hawkes are long-established veterans who have practically done it all: they've made numerous television and film soundtracks, played with everyone from Norah Jones to the B-52s and recorded in a wide variety of contexts, too many to name. So when the two finally got together for a Long Island arts festival in 2010, it was anyone's guess what they might come up with. The duo's collaboration has ultimately resulted in Wide Open Sky, a set of music as expansive as the title suggests, with a rich atmosphere that evokes broad landscapes and elusive vistas, with a few surprises thrown in for good measure." — All About Jazz ...

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The avant-jazz/Americana duo of Pat Irwin on guitar and J. Walter Hawkes on trombone celebrates the release of their new album Wide Open Sky

"Multi-instrumentalists Pat Irwin and J. Walter Hawkes are long-established veterans who have practically done it all: they've made numerous television and film soundtracks, played with everyone from Norah Jones to the B-52s and recorded in a wide variety of contexts, too many to name. So when the two finally got together for a Long Island arts festival in 2010, it was anyone's guess what they might come up with. The duo's collaboration has ultimately resulted in Wide Open Sky, a set of music as expansive as the title suggests, with a rich atmosphere that evokes broad landscapes and elusive vistas, with a few surprises thrown in for good measure." — All About Jazz

We've all heard countless musicians romanticize New York, but none of them have painted a portrait quite like this. One doesn't have to be from New York to appreciate the mournful undercurrent that threads through Wide Open Sky's quirky blend of classical composition, experimentation, and antiquated technology. In many ways, the album is an ode to a neighborly-ness and congeniality — and of being elbow-to-elbow with people you don't have much in common with — that's being swept away by the forward rush of change.

Wide Open Sky owes its very existence to a sense of place. Permeating the music's instrumental pieces is the constant tug between that intrinsic human need to feel like the ground is solid under our feet and that creeping certainty that all is fleeting. Likewise, in its own way the music reflects the strange and wonderfully haunted geometry of industrial spaces once colonized by artists now in retreat from gentrification — not a new story, by any means, but one that takes-on a unique expression in the music Hawkes and Irwin made.

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