Bio

“BEAUTIFUL… #CHILLS”

— Ann Powers of NPR Music 

Max Hatt / Edda Glass have "an incomparable spook” and a "unique sound" (Nashville Scene and NPR’s Larry Groce) that's taken them from their home in Montana and sent them across the county from NPR and PBS to NYC's Lincoln Center, DC's Kennedy Center, and the Sundance Film Festival. Praised for her "impeccable vocal command" (PopMatters), Glass's voice is ultimately "one of a kind...you cannot confuse her with another artist" (New York Theatre Guide). Their award-winning original music and mesmerizing reinventions of the Great American Songbook and Brazilian classics create a swoon-inducing soundscape of voice and guitar that is both epic and intimate, encapsulating “the confusing sentiment of feeling both lost and found, all at once" (New York Theater Guide). If we live in uneasy times, this music is both a reflection and antidote, an escape that is really a healing-in-place. 

Hatt grew up in the Chicago-land area, and has studied with Pat Metheny, Julian Lage, Lee Retinour, and at the David Baker program at Indiana University. The daughter of a jazz trombonist and a music aficionado, Glass was likewise steeped in jazz, and learned to sing through obsessive teenage listening to a little-known Nara Leão album. Glass and Hatt’s first collaboration was a Bossa Nova party band in Montana, founded on Glass’s knack for Brazilian Portuguese and Hatt’s love of Antonio Carlos Jobim. The band’s engagements took them everywhere from the Pacific Northwest to the Rocky Mountain states and as far south as Santa Fe, NM. On these long drives, Glass began writing lyrics to Hatt's solo guitar compositions: "Max's compositions are very cinematic," she recalls, "and you look out the window and it's like the camera's panning for you, over these enormous landscapes, and you start expecting something to happen— a story to begin." This highway collaboration took them all the way to New York City at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, where the two unknowns won the 2014 Grand Prize of the International Mountain Stage / NewSong Competition. It was there that their songs of migrating geese and mysteries in the wheat fields captured the attention of their future producer, Pat Sansone. “I was mesmerized from the first moment I heard them," Sansone recalls. "They have the ability to create a deep sonic landscape with only voice and guitar, with songs that poses a mysterious and soulful magic."

With other influences ranging from Neil Young to Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday, Baden Powell, Jefferson Airplane, Keith Jarrett, Bill Frisell, Patricia Barber, Chet Baker, Jim Hall, Paul Desmond, Charlie Haden, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Jim Jarmusch, J.D. Salinger, Marshall McLuhan, Ursula LeGuin— and absorbing the effects of mediums ranging from epic poetry to television— the duo truly creates "a unique sound harmoniously forged from seemingly disparate elements," (Larry Groce of NPR Mountain Stage). 


“Beautiful… #chills”

— Ann Powers (NPR Music) 


“…like hand-printed photographs that speak and sway, the material is hypnotic…"

— Lizz Wright

“Edda Glass’s voice must be heard to be believed— it is a remarkable instrument.”

— Nels Cline (Wilco)

"Max Hatt and Edda Glass ... are constantly, bravely reinventing themselves... pioneering more deeply into original material, music that I can say without reservation will be substantive and important. [...] Many are the musicians who adhere more closely to the mainstream, aligning their original music with that which has a track record of being entertaining. Few are those who insist that original music is an art, avoid the commodity and immediate gratification that comes from creating that which has proven to be sellable. I am always inspired by visionary charismatics who possess both the courage and the perseverance to pursue their art against the odds, trusting that their labors are not in vain. Max Hatt and Edda Glass are unique voices and rare musicians."

— Eric Funk, PBS host and internationally renowned composer
 

“Mesmerizing… cinematic folk-jazz”

— ASCAP’s Playback Magazine at Sundance Film Festival

“This jazz Americana duo portrays true elegance…”

— Daytrotter, Best of 2016

"Edda Glass’ primal singing and skywide-on-a-stormy-night lyrics left me breathless. "

— Nicole Atkins, Nashville Scene

 


“Their lyrics/ instrumentals encapsulate the confusing sentiment of feeling both lost and found, all at once…This album is for those that want to hear a song that tells them it is okay to be human, and that you are not alone in not knowing what that exactly means.”

— New York Theater Guide
 

“Music that creates a sense of vastness within its quiet.”

— Yes Weekly, John Adamian