About this project

This Reunion project is about reuniting with old friends after long, individual life journeys to share our experiences and rekindle our personal and musical relationships.

Jeff “Tain” Watts and Ira Coleman are two of the very first friends I made after moving to America to study music.  We became very close friends and musical collaborators in our early years at Berklee College of Music in Boston as well as in New York City, where we did our first gig together as a trio in 1985 in a small Manhattan club called The Angry Squire.

Since then, we have gone on to live separate, parallel lives and pursue our careers, reconnecting only occasionally, as life circumstances permitted. After a few intervening decades full of many new musical adventures and life changes, we will turn back the clock to the days of our youth when we were cutting our musical teeth in Boston and New York.  For this Reunion project, we will reconnect for the first time in many years, now with years of experience to add new depth to our long-standing musical friendship.

We will reunite for a series of rehearsals, a concert, and recording session in Copenhagen, Denmark. The end result will be an album of new music that is a testament to the enduring power of friendship and music to transcend time, despite life's many, inevitable changes. Even though we live on different continents and have had many years apart pursuing our own careers, dreams, and lives, music and improvisation bring us together and bridge the gap between us in both time and space.

While I was only a teenager growing up in Copenhagen, Denmark, Thad Jones, Ernie Wilkins, and the other American ex-pat's living there taught me that music is the elixir of life. These musicians, though much older than my friends and I at the time, had so much energy, vitality, and inspiration that came from playing jazz and improvising together.

Ira, Jeff and I want to capture this musical vitality and tell the story of our friendship with this very special new trio recording.  We then plan to tour together to share our new music with all of our fans outside of Denmark.

Throughout this journey of rediscovery, we will be sharing our many stories and our unique creative process with our fans through artist interviews, project updates, and other additional content that passes along this universal story of reconnecting with one's past friendships and youthful inspirations.

Join us for this exciting musical Reunion!