The Aquarian Weekly (5/16/18)
​With the kind of post-bop material that’s easy to listen to but hard to play, these twins have now officially joined the ranks of such historical jazz brother teams with names like Heath, Brecker, Marsalis, Farmer, Montgomery and Mangione. Welcome to the club, boys.

Memphis Flyer (5/31/18)
The two blossom into a drum and bass team that is almost telepathic.
​

Album

​Produced by Donald Brown

Bill Mobley (trumpet & flugelhorn except 5) 
Gregory Tardy (tenor & soprano sax)
Aaron Goldberg (piano) 
Donald Brown (Fender Rhodes)
Carl Seitaro Maguire (drums)
Alan Shutaro Maguire (upright bass) ​

 1. Theodicy                   　                                                                      6:08   
      by Gregory Tardy (BMI)
2. Hibiscus                                                                                               8:24     
      by Geoffrey Keezer (Keezer Music, BMI)
3. The Early Bird Gets The Short End of The Stick                  6:08    
     by Donald Brown (Kendoray Music)
4. Clarity                                                                                          5:36    
      by Jon Hamar (Hamar, Jon P, BMI)
5. Shed                                                                                                       6:00    
      by Aaron Goldberg (A Dawg Music Inc. BMI)
6. Song for Arjun                                                                           6:54    
       by Alan Shutaro Maguire (CD Baby Publisher) 
7. Witch                                                                                                     4:42    
       by Alan Shutaro Maguire (CD Baby Publisher) 
8. 49th St                                                                                                  5:19    
       by Bill Mobley (Mobtone Music)
9. Mid Air                                                                                         5:52   
       by Carl Seitaro Maguire & Ben Flint (CD Baby Publisher) 
10. Machi no Michi                                                                         6:16   
        by Carl Seitaro Maguire (CD Baby Publisher) 
11. An Island, A Piano, and Keith                                                  6:45  
        by Donald Brown (Kendoray Music)
12. Someday My Prince Will Come                                               6:50 
        by Frank Churchill, arranged by Alan Seitaro Maguire (Bourne Co)

                                                                                                          Total:  74:54
​

Recorded by Pete Matthews at Music+Arts Studio, Memphis, TN on March 13 & 14, 2017
Mixed by Pete Matthews at High Low Studios, Memphis, TN in March & April, 2017
Mastered by Dave Darlington at Bass Hit Studios, NYC, NY in May, 2017

Testimonials

When distilled into music, especially jazz, and more especially by this stereo innovation called Carl and Alan Maguire... it really is grace, and it brings with it both honor and welcome, and passion, and forward thinking -- and so much more!  These are two very old souls.
Kirk Whalum, Grammy Winning Jazz Saxophonist

How can it be that 2 brothers can communicate via their music on such a high level?!  It is uplifting to witness Carl and Alan Maguire move up the familial Jazz Ladder as they share their sounds with the world. 
John Clayton, bassist, Composer, Arranger and Co-leader of a Brothers band

They are a 21-year-old young Japanese rhythm section, drummer and bassist.  What I hear in this album is highly purified hard bop from America.  What a great feeling!
Takashi Yamamoto, Jazz Perspective Editor in Chief, Disk Union Jazz Dept Chief, Japan

I sense their youthful sparkle, rich musicality, solid techniques and their broad flexibility towards music all over in these twelve heavy duty tracks.  I feel that music is not merely a sound, it mirrors the player’s energy, emotion, personality and literary understanding.  It is exciting to see how Carl and Alan will develop as musicians in the future.  All the very best to their journey.
Keiko Matsui, Jazz Pianist & Composer

Carl and Alan's sophomore recording "Seeking Higher Ground" is a wonderful showcase of their continual growth as musicians. This was an enjoyable documentation to be a part of, and it forecasts the bright futures they have ahead of them.
Gregory Tardy, Jazz Saxophonist, Composer and Jazz Educator
​
It's just AWESOME !  Perfect quality, inspired music & solos ! Compositions are great !
Manuel Rocheman, Jazz Pianist and Composer

Jazz is about being true to yourself when you play, and that's how I felt about Carl and Alan after our first performance in Hong Kong. I was inspired by their passions for jazz at such early age. This wonderful album with great tunes beautifully produced by their mentor the great Donald Brown, truly shows off their committed role as the rhythm section. I'm thrilled for their accomplishments and looking forward to what lies ahead for them as they journey through the world of jazz. 
Ted Lo, Jazz Pianist, Composer, Producer

This is a treat for all those jazz aficionados who find themselves seeking proof of the foundation of the future of jazz. This music is sure to be considered a continuation of the tradition of jazz that still prospers, thrives, and grows stronger in the hands of this new generation of jazz artists.
Malvin Massey Jr., WMUR FM92 Memphis Radio General Manager

This album is fantastic!  I can feel that Carl & Alan, two young artists full of talent, are evolving further with strong musicians such as Gregory Tardy, Aaron Goldberg and Bill Mobley.
Toyoshi Narita  (Japan's No.1 Jazz Review Blogger)

The Maguire Twins
​Biography

Imagine identical, musically inclined twins growing up in Hong Kong, where they seldom heard jazz, and then at 15 moving with their Japanese mother and American father to musically rich Memphis.

Imagine these boys falling head over heels for jazz to the point of devoting their young lives to it—and then, during one of their regular visits to their grandmother in Japan, creating an enthusiastic following for the music in a town that had never been exposed to it.
But that’s not all, folks. Imagine drummer Carl Maguire and bassist Alan Maguire going into the studio with Memphis legend Donald Brown, barely into their twenties, and recording an topflight album with the likes of tenor saxophonist Gregory Tardy, trumpeter Bill Mobley, and pianist Aaron Goldberg.

When, you might ask, was the last time dual careers have gotten off to this kind of start?

It has indeed been a charmed, storybook life for the Maguire Twins, who at 21 have more worldly experience than many musicians acquire in a lifetime. And as signified by the title of their excellent new recording, Seeking Higher Ground, produced by Brown, they have only begun to grow as artists.
“It all goes back to Donald,” says Alan. “He has kept us motivated. He’s always giving us something new to work on, new CDs to check out, keeps us listening to all kinds of music and encourages us to get as many lessons from as many people as we can.” [Alan’s bass instructors, interestingly enough, have included Brown, a highly regarded pianist and composer.]

“Memphis is where most of our musical growing happened,” adds Carl. “I can't imagine us getting to where we are if we hadn’t come here.”
Seeking Higher Ground is a stellar showcase for the Maguires, as both players and composers. They contribute two originals each to the program, which includes songs by their illustrious bandmates and producer. And without sacrificing cohesiveness, the songs are stylistically diverse.

“Theodicy,” a timely commentary on misguided religion, is Tardy’s songwriting contribution. He plays tenor with his usual Coltrane-like intensity and, says Carl, “I try to somewhat embody Elvin Jones, who is one of my heroes.” Brown’s tricky “The Early Bird Gets the Short End of the Stick” boasts sudden time shifts and dramatic swoops that both twins laughingly said they were greatly relieved to have handled after numerous attempts.

Carl’s “Machi no Michi” (translation: “The Road of the Town”) is an elegant tribute to his Japanese origins, as reflected in the Japanese scale in the bassline and the traditional taiko drum feel in the composer’s playing. “I love the taiko drum’s huge sound and the commanding way it is played,” says Carl, who tunes his snares tightly to highlight the melody.

“I used to have a more resounding sound, but I love this kind of playing,” says the drummer, whose curlicued press rolls are his calling card. “It’s how I hear music. When I”m playing I'm thinking about the melodies going on. That’s the way Eric Harland and Kendrick Scott and Marcus Gilmore play,” he adds, naming three of his foremost contemporary influences.

And then there’s Alan’s “Witch,” the album’s riskiest piece, which was inspired in part by the eerie 2015 film, The Witch. The open tune features Tardy playing jittery lines behind Mobley’s beautiful, austere phrasing, free-jazzish harmonies, and subtle Cuban accents.

When they first entered the studio, the twins were unabashedly star-struck by their session mates, particularly Goldberg. “When we heard that Donald got Aaron for the session, it was like, oh, no way,” says Carl. “It was pretty scary. He was one of the first pianists we checked out when we started getting into modern music.”

Goldberg’s composition, “Shed,” one of the highlights on Seeking Higher Ground, was the first modern jazz tune the Maguires learned how to play. They heard the pianist play it as a sideman on saxophonist Walter Smith III’s Live in Paris and on Goldberg’s own album, Home. “It has been one of our favorites for the longest time,” says Carl.

“Just watching Aaron count off his tunes helped me internalize time, made my time stronger,” says Alan, whose role models on bass include Ray Brown (known as “Father Time”), Ron Carter, and Christian McBride.

The composing and piano playing of another gifted Aaron—Parks—figured into Alan’s offbeat arrangement of “Someday My Prince Will Come,” which closes Seeking Higher Ground. Alan cited Parks’s “Chronos,” written for and recorded with the supergroup James Farm, as a strong influence. The repeated single note played over many bars by Goldberg lends a haunting minimalist effect.

Carl Seitaro Maguire and Alan Shutaro Maguire were born on March 19, 1996 in Tokyo, Japan.  The family moved to Hong Kong when the twins were three.
While attending a British international school in Hong Kong, the boys heard mostly electronic pop and trance music. When their older brother Kevin started a rock band at the seasoned age of 12, he recruited his 10-year-old siblings. Even though Alan knew nothing about the bass, he was assigned that instrument because he had started taking classical guitar lessons. (He also plays piano.)

Carl was tabbed to play drums because he was studying it, along with trumpet. After Kevin quit the band, Alan and Carl kept at it, forming their own bass and drum duo at age 14. “It made everything easy for us,” says Carl. “When we did a gig we only needed to find one player.”

It wasn’t long after the move to Memphis and the Maguires enrolled at the Stax Music Academy that they were playing jazz. Saxophonist Kirk Whalum, then the artist in residence at Stax, had more than a little to do with that. So did Donald Brown, whom they met there when he came to scout students as a faculty member at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. (They went on to study there with him, Gregory Tardy, and bassist Jon Hamar, who composed another of the album’s heartfelt ballads, “Clarity.”)

They learned to improvise listening to musicians at jazz clubs. “The music just took us over,” says Carl. “When I heard a bassist, I would tell Alan about it. When he heard a drummer, he would make suggestions to me based on what he saw and heard. We helped each other out.

“We were open to criticism from each other as well as ideas. Friends don’t want to be too harsh, but we can criticize each other as much as we want.”

When the Maguire family made its annual visit to Japan to visit the twins’ maternal grandmother in the inland town of Kitaakita City, the boys performed in various spots, building a following among local musicians as well as fans. Requests for CDs led them to record, at 18, The Sound of Music, a demo-style album released in 2014.

Produced by Brown and featuring Whalum, trumpeter/flugelhornist Tom Williams, and pianist Keith Brown, Donald’s son, it showcases the Maguires on material ranging from jazz standards like “Speak Low” to the Broadway-derived title track to “Hamabe no Uta,” a popular early-20th-century Japanese tune translated into jazz.
Perhaps most significantly to them, they recorded Joe Henderson’s hard-bop classic, “Inner Urge.” Henderson had an enormous influence on them. “He got us into the music,” says Carl. “His harmonies blew me away, plus his writing is so drummeristic.”

They pay homage to the Blue Note great on the bop vehicle, “Mid Air,” which Carl co-wrote with Ben Flint, a teacher of his. It’s Hendersonian through and through.

Oddly enough, the Maguires are not the only bass and drum pairing who are identical twins. The exceptional, French-born François and Louis Moutin are charter members of that club.

You would expect Carl and Alan to enjoy a special connection on the bandstand, the way twins do in life, but they were less interested in discussing possible extrasensory ties than the benefits of their shared experience.
“Being the same age, taking classes together, playing with each other all the time—we just know each other really well,” says Carl. “We understand how our personalities fit together in terms of the roles we play.”
“We know what we want from each other,” says Alan.
With each tour of Japan and Hong Kong, where they began performing on an annual basis in 2013, their Asian following has grown. So has the talent pool they draw from over there. The twins have performed with artists such as guitarist Yosuke Onuma, trombonist Shigeharu Mukai, pianist Yuichi Inoue, and saxophonist Yosuke Sato in Japan as well as pianist Ted Lo in Hong Kong.
Says Carl, “Now when we go back to Japan, where jazz has been really important to a lot of people for a long time, we do so as individuals who really appreciate this music. It’s been quite an awakening for us, and it keeps getting more fun.”  •

The Maguire Twins: Seeking Higher Ground
(Three Tree Records)
Street Date: March 30, 2018
​Website: http://www.themaguiretwins.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/themaguiretwins/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/themaguiretwins
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themaguiretwins/
​EPK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YCdYtB-m9o 

Liner Notes

The Maguire Twins have accomplished much in a short time.  The twin brothers, just 22, are already world class jazz musicians who hold their own on stage and in the recording studios with top all-stars, offering tasteful and stimulating accompaniment along with occasional solos of their own.

Born in Tokyo and raised in Hong Kong, Alan Maguire remembers, “Our older brother is the reason that we began playing music.  He played guitar and wanted to create a band so I started playing bass and Carl became a drummer. We had a rock band for a short time.” Although their brother soon stopped playing music, the bug had bitten Alan and Carl and they dedicated themselves to music.
After moving with their family to Memphis when they were 15, they met two important forces in their lives: pianist Donald Brown and saxophonist Kirk Whalum.  “Kirk was the the Stax Artist in Residence and he was very supportive of us,” says Carl.  “Almost every month he would bring in a different artist for the students to hear play.  I remember seeing Charles Lloyd and his band which totally blew our minds.’  Alan adds, ‘The band’s rhythm section was great.  The fluidity of Reuben Rogers and the rhythmic complicity of Eric Harland completely changed the way we perceived the music.  From then on, we wanted to play jazz.”  In 2013, the Maguires met Donald Brown who soon became their mentor.  “We were very lucky to have lessons early on from him,” continues Carl.  “He’s a musical genius who truly inspired us.”
In 2014, Carl and Alan released their first CD, “The Sound Of Music”, utilizing both Brown and Whalum.  “We recorded the entire album in one 12-hour session,” says Carl.  “We recorded 9 songs and did not know that normally it should take two or three days!”  Since then,  the Maguires have performed various venues in the United States including Knoxville Jazz Festival and have toured Japan and Hong Kong.
For Seeking Higher Ground, Carl and Alan Maguire are joined by tenor-saxophonist Gregory Tardy, veteran trumpeter Bill Mobley, and pianist Aaron Goldberg, with Donald Brown (who appears on one selection) producing the project.  Alan says, “We listened to pianist Aaron Goldberg when we first started playing jazz and his song “Shed” was the first song that we learned from musicians of his generation.  When Donald said that he had gotten him for the date, we were just amazed.”  The quintet performs two songs by each of the brothers and Donald Brown, one apiece from Tardy, Goldberg, Mobley, Geoffrey Keezer and Jon Hamar, and a fresh version of a standard.
The set begins with Tardy’s “Theodicy.”  The two horns give the music a classic hard bop sound but the complex chord changes, the passionate tenor, trumpet and piano solos, and the assertive drumming of Carl make it clear that this is 21st century jazz.  Goldberg’s patterns on the piano set the mood and groove for Keezer’s “Hibiscus.”  Alan’s bass lines are a particularly attractive part of this piece which also has fine soprano playing by Tardy and one of many excellent trumpet solos.  “The Early Bird Gets The Short End Of The Stick” was composed by Donald Brown before he came to New York and joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.  This hard-driving piece inspires several inventive solos particularly from the explorative Tardy.  The somber ballad “Clarity” was composed by Alan’s bass teacher Jon Hamar. It features brief statements that perfectly fit the melancholy mood.           
Since Aaron Goldberg’s “Shed,” which has a particularly catchy pattern in 5/4 time, was such an important part of Carl and Alan Maguire’s early development, it was a thrill for the brothers to record the song with the composer himself. Listen to how closely and effortlessly Alan and Carl Maguire work with each other.           
Alan’s “Song For Arjun,” written in memory of a friend from Hong Kong who died at age 19, is a celebration of life that has a dramatic melody, powerful solo statements, and strong accompaniment by the Maguire Twins.  The bassist’s other piece, the mostly out-of-tempo “Witch,” is more avant-garde and utilizes colorful harmonies.  A contrast is offered in Mobley’s “49th Street,” a swinging romp through the chord changes of “Lover.”  Carl’s “Midair,” which is based on Joe Henderson’s “Inner Urge,” has numerous colorful drum breaks along with fiery solos.   
The drummer’s “Machi No Michi” pays tribute to the Maguires’ heritage with an Asian tinge to the melody, a Japanese scale in the bassline, and the feel of taiko drums throughout.  Donald Brown’s “An Island, A Piano, And Keith,” is an upbeat number originally written for his son pianist Keith Brown.  This rewarding CD concludes with Alan’s arrangement of “Someday My Prince Will Come” which greatly modernizes the song, uses a completely different chord progression, and inspires some particularly strong improvising.

Seeking Higher Ground covers a wide area of music from bebop to the avant-garde.  It is a major step forward for Carl and Alan Maguire, two young musicians whose potential is being realized

Scott Yanow
​Jazz journalist/historian and author of 11 books including Bebop, Trumpet Kings and Jazz On Film