Sean Ongley

Tag: Jerry Soga

  • OHS Pieces Volume Three

    OHS Pieces Volume Three

    At last, the third volume of Pieces by OHS, the free jazz trio featuring Jerry Soga and Doug Haning with myself. I also produced the recordings. Jerry provided the photos for the cover art.

    I’m not great with design, so I keep it simple. I like how the H symbolically ties Ongley and Soga together. In a weird way, he is the independent voice that makes our wild anti-rhythm section come together.

    You can hear Volume One and Volume Two right here, or just go to ongley.bandcamp.com.

    This is the beginning and end for this project. We never had ambitions, really. It is a good example of just doing what is fun with the people you love. The outcome is unimportant, but you put in the honest effort so long as you’re there.

    Any lover of free jazz can hear that we know what we’re doing even if we are not the best players. We are far from the best players. However, the love of the form is there. It is the formless form. Free music shall never be heard twice, unless it is recorded.

    To reiterate the story, we came together over the course of 2017. It was my final year in Portland. I had a studio space for THRU Media in the basement of Fish Sauce restaurant. I produced it there.

    The sessions sat in my hard drives for years as I adjusted to living in Philadelphia. Finally, in 2021, I got around to it.

    With six sessions total, I combined two sessions per volume, giving a variety of feel to each album. There are twice as many pieces remaining on the editing room floor.

    Please enjoy or learn to enjoy free jazz, and in particular OHS.

  • OHS Pieces Volume Two

    OHS Pieces Volume Two

    This is the second installment of three albums by Ongley Haning and Soga. As previously discussed, this music was a long time coming. The third volume is finished, I’m just staging it with some hope it might get a tiny bit more attention that way.

    My love for free jazz, even though it is often ugly and clumsy, remains steady. This trio is gritty. Jerry never learned music. He couldn’t play traditional music if you asked him to. He only knows how to do what he does. I struggle with music. I always had many interests, like Doug, so this music is more heart that training. There are thousands of hours of playing and listening behind this music. It is definitely art.

    This is anarchy. It is peaceful congregation. It is cooperative. It is better than democracy. It is love. We all get to be truly ourselves here.

    Please listen and consider purchasing a copy. Thanks.

  • OHS Sessions Volume One

    OHS Sessions Volume One

    In 2017, when I had settled into the THRU Media studio, I began to host music sessions of my own for the first time in years. I asked my friends Jerry Soga and Doug Haning to come over and do some good old “free jazz” with me.

    Jerry played acoustic bass. Doug played reed instruments, and a little bit of electric piano. I played drums. We didn’t have a band name, I just wanted to produce some sessions. In the end, I have called it Ongley, Haning, and Soga (OHS).

    Each volume consists of two sessions. Each session was combed through for pieces that could be recognized as having an organic start and end point. Each piece was labeled by sequence: sessions 1-6, cuts 1-xx.

    After isolating those cuts, I mixed and mastered them. Once I had the complete sessions, I listened through all five and a half hours of content to slim it down by half.

    The result is three volumes in diminishing length. The first is out now and the remaining are being staged for monthly release.

    It is interesting to hear how we progress over those sessions. By the end, we have a band with a certain kind of sound. My drumming tightened up, but it’s still sloppy, and difficult because we play outside of time. Sometimes we are united by tempo and rhythm, sometimes we each have a different sense of it, but we’re always listening.