Zoom’s musical story starts back a to Cambridge. Massachusetts about 15 years ago is where I met my good friend and collaborator Jean-Baptiste Boclé, the French-born multi-mallet man, while sitting in with his girlfriend (now wife) Maria’s killer Latin jazz band ‘Maria, Maria.’ A disciple and student of legendary vibraphonist Gary Burton, Jean-Baptiste used to tear up a place called Ryles Jazz Club every Wednesday night. At the same time I was honing my own skills with Marcello Pelliterri, another great drummer from across the pond, at the very same club. Sicilian born Marcello and I had a steady weekend gig for about three years at Ryles with a local R&B sax player by the name of Herman Johnson. For some reason Herman liked to play his first set for about two and a half hours or more, hardly ever stopping to take a breath, never mind a break. Needless to say, me and ‘Monsieur’ cut our teeth on this jam-band gig. After doing some gigs with Jamba and Maria’s more sophisticated Brazilian-influenced band we all became musical friends for life. Skipping ahead to the late nineties in NYC where we all landed , I had this steady gig once a week in a cave-like dwelling called the Lounge at Penang on New York City’s Upper West Side. We’ve all been settled into New York’s busy and vast jazz scene for a few years now and are still alive to tell the tale. I had been building a decent rep in New York working on my studio tan and road chops with British Rocker Joe Jackson while Jamba and Marcello had been touring the world with the Latin Gypsy kings. On a practical note, the club only had enough bread to pay a trio, and seeing as we had no bass player in our trio, I was encouraged to try my[left] hand at laying down bass lines and grooves on my keyboard organ as the old-school organists do. At first I felt like somebody chopped my left arm off, but after a while, with Marcello’s rock steady feel, and Jamba’s gentle prodding, I got the hang of it. Andy Ezrin (liner notes).