I’m excited to release a new CD featuring all original compositions and some amazing musicians listed below. It is a honor to have the cover art painted by the great Philip Burke!
Matt Otto – composer, Tenor Sax, EWI
Peter Schlamb – Electric Vibraphone
Eddie Moore – Moog/Rhodes
Andrew Ouellette – Rhodes
Matt Villinger – Rhodes
Roger Wilder – Rhodes
Alex Frank – Guitar
Karl McComas-Reichl – Cello
Zach Morrow – Drums
John Kizilarmut – Drums
Jason Harnell – Drums
Brandon Draper – Drums
Ben Leifer – Bass
Jeff Harshbarger – Bass
David J. Carpenter – Bass
Matt Otto – Ephemeral
Liner Notes:
Gary Fukushima
Los Angeles, September 2026
A blink of an eye. The sour from a lemon drop. A flash of lightning or the sudden glow before sunset. An echo through the canyon, or the gong of a church bell or meditation bowl, resounding until it isn’t anymore. Names of people you once were close to. A hug from someone you love. The anger you felt during the argument just before. The best summer of your life. The cold bitterness of the worst winter. Some of these last longer than others, but none last forever. They are ephemeral.
Of all the arts, music is most like this. Sound waves dissipate the instant they are produced. Melodies once had to be remembered to endure; the advent of written notation and audio recording only helps to keep the notes from fleeing as fast. Perhaps a simpler song can be retained more easily. Matt Otto has come to this conclusion. “At this point in my life I mostly try to write songs I hear in my mind and that I personally like the sound of,” he says. “I’ve mostly stopped writing complex, longform difficult music and instead focused on short, heartfelt pieces that have a vibe and are easy for good musicians to work with right away. I don’t think this is a conscious decision, it’s just what tends to happen when I sit down to write – I feel like I’m a simple person and my music is beginning to reflect that more as I age.”
By human standards, Otto has been on a decidedly long musical journey, approaching forty years; twice as long as Coltrane’s incandescent but ephemeral career. Otto’s steady burn has also spanned distance – from Laguna Beach to Bloomington, Boston, New York, Tokyo, Los Angeles, and ultimately Kansas City, where he has found a lasting home. Over those stretches of time and space, he has written hundreds of compositions, yet he rarely revisits most of them, preferring to write new songs. “I’ve always thought of an album as a diary of recent personal and emotional events expressed through music,” he explains.
It follows then that all the tunes on this latest album save one are new expressions of Otto’s current life moments. He’s decided to title it Ephemeral, aptly describing both the nature of those moments and his compositional vignettes. Start with the title track, essentially a 5-bar tune that divvies up a prime number of beats: 7-7-7-4-4. “Scroll” is another short piece, a repeated 10-bar form with a vamp. Otto says he wrote that “in reference to phone obsession,” with the relentless images that project from our screens into and out of our minds keeping with the album’s theme. And then there is “Twilight,” an unadorned but beautifully affective melody. “At the time I wrote it, I was contemplating my old age which is quickly approaching…it felt like the song was a glimpse into the emotional state of my late life,” Otto muses. Even a long life lived into its latter stages can indeed seem ephemeral.
It is perhaps why Otto (and all of us) would counter the inevitable by encapsulating that which we cherish. These songs do that. “Dune Town” is the lone tune from years ago, a Coltrane contrafact, an homage to the arid hills of Los Angeles. “Elliot” is for the composer Elliot Carter, one of Otto’s musical inspirations who passed away in 2012. “Sobule” memoralizes singer/songwriter Jill Sobule, who tragically died in a fire earlier this year. “Wadada” honors trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, one of Otto’s mentors who gave him some sage advice: “When you solo, play one thing you know followed by one thing you don’t know.” And “Rachel” is for Otto’s sister-in-law, bestowing on her this beautiful tone-poem as a lovely birthday present.
The lives of the people we know and the moments we share are poignantly ephemeral. Otto also recognizes this in his fellow artists. “I can say that all the musicians on the album are my friends,” he states. “I try to get strong players for sure, but the friendship comes first. That feeling of trust which allows you to be yourself when you play really grows on and off the bandstand. When you are friends, that trust is there even when you’re not at your best.”
Writing melodies for those you love and admire and playing them with those you trust helps to place all of them in something that helps us to remember, to endure in us past their ephemeral existence. Otto’s musical snapshots help us do the same for him.
You can listen to and/or buy the album on Band Camp:
Here’s a few tracks from the album that I have live video of: