Biography

After working with everyone from Slick Rick to Thelonious Monk's drummer Ben Riley, Cassorla sat down at his beat-up old piano to write What With, Brooklyn-based Engine Studio's latest release. He channeled the musicians that shaped him -- Jimi Hendrix, Bill Frisell, and D'Angelo.

"This album," Cassorla says, "ended up being an attempt to go back to my childhood," which Cassorla spent in Philadelphia listening to Sun Ra and The Roots. And it’s these roots that you hear in his guitar solos, in the grit in Krystle Warren's voice, in the tight horn arrangements that weave through songs. Kenny Burrell, another childhood idol of Cassorla’s, has singled the album out for its “original concepts and fine musicianship,” for songs that are “filled with musical emotion.”