After the success of The Jack Furlong Quartet's last album, "And That Happened," the duo of Jack Furlong and Sean Gough releases CHARITY, a new album of improvisation over Christian hymns. The meaning of the album title is in some ways obvious. With a quarter of the money raised from their crowd-funding campaign, and with over half of the proceeds from future record sales: we'll make ongoing donations to Oxfam (http://www.oxfamamerica.org/whoweare), to the ASPCA (http://www.aspca.org/about-us), and to the OSIP Foundation (Outstanding Sportsmanship Is Paramount: www.osipfoundation.org), a sports-related charitable organization that Jack (as baseball umpire and manager) is also using this album as the occasion to launch, announce, and invite you to support as OSIP gets off the ground. The OSIP Foundation has two main goals in its mission statement: To provide financial aid and assistance to those affected by acts of aggression due to poor sportsmanship and/or fanship. To raise awareness of the need for better sportsmanship in all capacities throughout sports. In addition to continuing to raise funds for OSIP, Oxfam, and ASPCA, our goal with the album is to bring this music to churches and other venues, in live concert, to celebrate good will through music. This explains the source material on the album --- Christian hymns --- for folks who may find that choice of material confusing. Granted, they would not be wrong to say that the activity of religion often belies a commitment to charity. In a quest to establish who's in and who's out of the club, and who's doctrinally right and who's eternally wrong, religion too easily provides safe places for the already safe, to assert nominal superiority and practice empty habits: speaking well of charity, but tacitly looking down not only on those with less fortunate circumstances, but those who don't consent to a given faction's story or authority. What if religion were devoted foremost to universal love and charity, instead of maintenance of status and property? So this album also stands as a fervent wish for actual CHARITY - empathy - generosity - grace - dignity - for EVERYONE. We believe this to be completely connected with music and especially improvised music, which is most of what you hear on the album.