Max Hatt / Edda Glass
After playing Bossa Nova in Montana for 10 years, Max Hatt / Edda Glass emerged with their original music for a surprise grand-prize win at the 2014 NewSong Competition, held at Lincoln Center, NYC. “Max Hatt/Edda Glass often defied categorization,” said Gar Ragland, the contest’s director, calling them, “arguably the most distinctive finalist act – let alone winner – we’ve ever had.” Last winter they played officially at the 2015 Sundance Film Fest, where ASCAP’s Playback Magazine described their sets as “mesmerizing cinematic folk jazz.”
Max Hatt / Edda Glass are “unique voices and rare musisians [who are] constantly, bravely reinventing themselves,” according to Eric Funk, internationally renowned composer and host of MT-PBS’s Emmy-award winning 11th and Grant Show. The duo’s original music features Hatt’s deceptively complex melodies and Glass’s evocative, thought-provoking lyrics that draw from western imagery and sense of place. ‘The common thread,” says Glass, “is that it’s all intimate, conversational’ yet sophisticated ‘ music. And it’s music that evokes a world, whether it’s the beaches of 1960s Rio, or the Great Plains rolling out for miles.”
Their upcoming album releases this fall on NewSong Recordings, produced by Pat Sansone of Wilco & Autumn Defense, and recorded at Echo Mountain Studios in Asheville, NC. They are currently based in Santa Fe, NM.
Edda Glass is the daughter of a jazz trombonist and a music aficionado. Mostly an autodidact, she sang Bossa Nova in Montana for 10 years, while quietly penning the lyrics to Max Hatt / Edda Glass’s growing body of work. As she likes to point out, “There’s something poignant about singing Girl from Ipanema when it’s negative forty out.” In addition to Max Hatt / Edda Glass, she and Hatt also front Rio, a jazz and Bossa Nova group based in Santa Fe, NM.
Max Hatt grew up in the Chicago-land area and studied jazz guitar at Michigan State, the David Baker program at Indiana University, in addition to classes with Pat Metheny, Julian Lage, and Lee Retinour. Like Glass, Hatt has also been hiding out in Montana, playing in a Bossa Nova band, and honing the original compositions which are the musical basis of Max Hatt / Edda Glass. With the addition of Glass’s vocals and lyrics, these compositions brought the duo abruptly to the national stage at Lincoln Center, NYC, where they won grand-prize of the Mountain Stage/New Song Contest.