Formality vs Reality (2019) – jazz-hued harmonic explorations for 17-tone Rhodes and saxophone
Formality vs Reality is a 2018/2019 collaborative album by Noah Dean Jordan and saxophonist Dominic Conway, exploring the blurred edges of harmony, mood, and musical perception. For this project, Noah rebuilt a Rhodes electric piano, retuning it to a 17-tone-per-octave system and dividing it across three registers. This new temperament unlocks unfamiliar tonal terrain—where major and minor dissolve into a spectrum of expressive ambiguity, and chord progressions unfold with unexpected motion and resonance.
Dominic Conway navigates this altered landscape with remarkable sensitivity, his saxophone weaving intuitively through the microtonal shifts with both fluency and fire. Together, the duo crafts jazz-hued harmonic explorations that straddle composition and improvisation—rooted in tradition yet pulled toward unknown possibilities. The album unfolds as a dialogue between structure and surprise, offering a harmonic world where formality and reality coexist in tension, resonance, and play.
Bandcamp: https://formalityvsreality.bandcamp.com/album/formality-vs-reality
Noah Dean Jordan 