Prime Of Life
By Dan McClenaghan
Prime of Life, drummer Pete Zimmer's fifth recording as a leader, has a clean, crisp, soulful sound. The players of the quartet—all top-notch musicians—meld their talents into a polished cohesion. Zimmer is a fine drummer capable of impeccable timekeeping and intricate, though usually subtle percussive flourishes. Zimmer's music, with its tight grooves, sounds like heartland jazz, like the quintessentially American sound of an organ trio—without, in this case, the Hammond B3 breathing into the mix.
Guitarist Peter Bernstein, who has worked extensively with organists Melvin Rhyne and Larry Goldings, is a tangy presence here, whether laying down a slow, thoughtful, single-noting solo on "Tranquility," or with his ringing, organ-like chording on "Carefree."
George Garzone fronts this quartet outing. The somewhat underappreciated saxophonist seems to fall into the "musicians' musician" category, like Joe Henderson prior to the late saxophonist's late-career breakout recording, "So Near, So Far" (Musings for Miles) (Verve, 1992). Like Henderson, Garzone solos with a labyrinthine eloquence, smoking in front of bassist Peter Slavov's always solid, always subtle pulse and Zimmer's relentless simmer on "T.T.T.," one of three tunes Garzone contributes to this otherwise all-Zimmer-penned outing.
Where Garzone's "T.T.T" runs hot, Zimmer's "Night Vision" rides on a cool and laidback cruise control. It's a fluid roll, like a big new American-made sedan following its headlights along a freshly-paved highway, on a straight shot through the darkness over gentle rises and falls.
"Almost Home," at just a notch above ballad tempo, features Garzone's most beautiful blowing, and a very piquant solo by Bernstein, leading into the controlled burn of the closer, "The Three Petes," with Garzone—the group's only "non-Pete"—serving up another of his engagingly circuitous saxophone soliloquies.
Track Listing:
Prime of Life; One for GG; Tranquility; Carefree; Strollin' Down Bourbon Street; T.T.T.; Night Vision; Almost Home; The Three Petes.
Personnel:
Personnel:
Pete Zimmer: drums; George Garzone: tenor saxophone; Peter Bernstein: guitar; Peter Slavov: bass.
Dave King with Bill Carrothers and Billy Peterson
Dave King with Bill Carrothers and Billy Peterson
I've Been Ringing You
By Dan McClenaghan
Drummer Dave King's major fame and fortune—though mostly fame; this is, after all, jazz we're talking about—comes from his work with The Bad Plus. That particular modern piano trio can go loud, combining elements of pop and rock while delving into the avant-garde side of jazz. TBP has been described as bombastic, but King doesn't limit himself to his main gig. He works in several side projects, and for his I've Been Ringing You, he joins up with fellow Minnesotans, pianist Bill Carrothers and bassist Billy Peterson, who blend their talents on a distinctive set of Great American Songbook standards and familiar tunes.
Recorded in four hours in a rented church in his home state, the trio set out to create a dark, moody atmosphere, opening with Gordon Jenkins' classic "Goodbye," perhaps the world's saddest song, covered so well by pianist Bobo Stenson on Goodbye(ECM, 2005), and by on pianist Keith Jarrett's duo record with bassist Charlie Haden's Jasmine (ECM Records, 2010). King opens the tune with his "waterphone," an eerie, resonant whine, into which Carrothers chimes. The piano sound is intimate and immediate, with a hint of an echoing murk, the individual bristles on David King's scratching, whispering brushes almost countable.
The always mesmerizing melody of alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" gets slowed down, with Carrothers injecting a dark sparkle. King stumbles into Cole Porter's "So In Love," the trio sounding relaxed and loose—like the best sessions laid down relatively quickly by top level players. Carrothers careens a bit, a pianist who seems to veer toward rolling out of control in the quicker tempos, but he never does. He's also a perfect pick for the chosen atmosphere, a player who can slow things down until time seems to nearly stop. His take on the Depression era tune, "Brother Can You Spare a Dime," on his I Love Paris (Pirouet Records, 2005), is a small masterpiece of the slow marinating of a familiar melody, as is this trio's take on the much-covered "If I Should Lose You."
King's trio closes with a group improvisation; a mournful and hauntingly beautiful ballad that stands well with the standards, the trio sounds, collectively, as if it has lost a great love, ending I've Been Ringing You on a somber, tear-inducing note.
Track Listing:
By Dan McClenaghan
Drummer Dave King's major fame and fortune—though mostly fame; this is, after all, jazz we're talking about—comes from his work with The Bad Plus. That particular modern piano trio can go loud, combining elements of pop and rock while delving into the avant-garde side of jazz. TBP has been described as bombastic, but King doesn't limit himself to his main gig. He works in several side projects, and for his I've Been Ringing You, he joins up with fellow Minnesotans, pianist Bill Carrothers and bassist Billy Peterson, who blend their talents on a distinctive set of Great American Songbook standards and familiar tunes.
Recorded in four hours in a rented church in his home state, the trio set out to create a dark, moody atmosphere, opening with Gordon Jenkins' classic "Goodbye," perhaps the world's saddest song, covered so well by pianist Bobo Stenson on Goodbye(ECM, 2005), and by on pianist Keith Jarrett's duo record with bassist Charlie Haden's Jasmine (ECM Records, 2010). King opens the tune with his "waterphone," an eerie, resonant whine, into which Carrothers chimes. The piano sound is intimate and immediate, with a hint of an echoing murk, the individual bristles on David King's scratching, whispering brushes almost countable.
The always mesmerizing melody of alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" gets slowed down, with Carrothers injecting a dark sparkle. King stumbles into Cole Porter's "So In Love," the trio sounding relaxed and loose—like the best sessions laid down relatively quickly by top level players. Carrothers careens a bit, a pianist who seems to veer toward rolling out of control in the quicker tempos, but he never does. He's also a perfect pick for the chosen atmosphere, a player who can slow things down until time seems to nearly stop. His take on the Depression era tune, "Brother Can You Spare a Dime," on his I Love Paris (Pirouet Records, 2005), is a small masterpiece of the slow marinating of a familiar melody, as is this trio's take on the much-covered "If I Should Lose You."
King's trio closes with a group improvisation; a mournful and hauntingly beautiful ballad that stands well with the standards, the trio sounds, collectively, as if it has lost a great love, ending I've Been Ringing You on a somber, tear-inducing note.
Track Listing:
Goodbye; Lonely Woman; So in Love; Autumn Serenade; If I SShould Lose You; People Will Say; This Nearly Was Mine; I've Been Ringing You.
Personnel:
Personnel:
Dave King: drums, waterphone (1): Bill Carrothers: piano; Billy Peterson: drums.
Mary Louise Knutson
Call Me When You Get There
Mary Louise Knutson
Call Me When You Get There
By Scott Yanow
High-quality jazz is practically everywhere. For proof of that statement, this CD from a Minnesota-based pianist can serve as evidence. Mary Louis Knutson is an excellent jazz player whose voicings sometimes recall Bill Evans but who has developed a lyrical style of her own. Joined by bassist Gordon Johnson and either Marc Rio, Phil Hey, or Craig Hara on drums, the pianist plays five mostly relaxed versions of familiar standards (including "Tangerine," "On Green Dolphin Street," and "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face"). However, it is her five originals that are of greatest interest, for she has a talent for coming up with fresh melodies. "Merle the Pearl," "Meridian," and "Call Me When You Get There" each sticks in one's mind and, if this local CD received some national attention, it is possible that a couple of the originals would catch on. Well-worth searching for.
The Dave Miller Trio with Rebecca DuMaine
Deed I Do...
By Allegro
"Snappy" is the word that comes to mind when listening to this delightful album of jazz music with a classic flair. DEED I DO displays the instrumental virtuosity of the Dave Miller trio with Rebecca DeMaine on lead vocals, swinging her way through a dozen ditties from the Great American Songbook. The music has an intimate quality to it, as if you are attending a private event at a swanky jazz lounge. DeMaine's vocals are full of verve and just the right amount of sassy playfulness, with a smooth timbre that works perfectly against the bebop backdrop. The trio itself provides a peppy mix of piano, drums and bass that will keep your toes tapping to well known gems like "Trolley Song," "Frim Fram Sauce," "All I Do Is Dream Of You," "Deed I Do" and more.
Dave Miller presents the luscious vocals of Rebecca Dumaine and the Great American Songbook for an wonderfully performed and very listenable outing! First recording on Summit reached #12 on the JazzWeek Radio Chart. Miller began playing the piano by ear at the age of three. Soon after his move from New York to San Francisco, he met percussionist Bill Belasco and the two have been inseparable ever since. During the past decade, the duo has been graced by the presence of, and inspired by, renowned bassist Mario Suraci. Rebecca DuMaine began her career as an actress in New York. After moving to the Bay Area in Summer 2010, she reconnected with her love of jazz music and has been playing with the trio consistently.
Featured Artists:
Dave Miller: piano; Mario Suraci: bass; Bill Belasco: drums; Rebecca DuMaine: vocals
Track Listing:
Deed I Do • Moonlight Saving Time • I Love Being Here With You • I Like Men • Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars • Problem-Jay Leonhart • The Trolley Song • Isn’t It a Lovely Day • Frim Fram Sauce • Rhode Island • All I Do Is Dream of You • The Boy Next Door
Patricia Barber
Smash
High-quality jazz is practically everywhere. For proof of that statement, this CD from a Minnesota-based pianist can serve as evidence. Mary Louis Knutson is an excellent jazz player whose voicings sometimes recall Bill Evans but who has developed a lyrical style of her own. Joined by bassist Gordon Johnson and either Marc Rio, Phil Hey, or Craig Hara on drums, the pianist plays five mostly relaxed versions of familiar standards (including "Tangerine," "On Green Dolphin Street," and "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face"). However, it is her five originals that are of greatest interest, for she has a talent for coming up with fresh melodies. "Merle the Pearl," "Meridian," and "Call Me When You Get There" each sticks in one's mind and, if this local CD received some national attention, it is possible that a couple of the originals would catch on. Well-worth searching for.
The Dave Miller Trio with Rebecca DuMaine
Deed I Do...
By Allegro
"Snappy" is the word that comes to mind when listening to this delightful album of jazz music with a classic flair. DEED I DO displays the instrumental virtuosity of the Dave Miller trio with Rebecca DeMaine on lead vocals, swinging her way through a dozen ditties from the Great American Songbook. The music has an intimate quality to it, as if you are attending a private event at a swanky jazz lounge. DeMaine's vocals are full of verve and just the right amount of sassy playfulness, with a smooth timbre that works perfectly against the bebop backdrop. The trio itself provides a peppy mix of piano, drums and bass that will keep your toes tapping to well known gems like "Trolley Song," "Frim Fram Sauce," "All I Do Is Dream Of You," "Deed I Do" and more.
Dave Miller presents the luscious vocals of Rebecca Dumaine and the Great American Songbook for an wonderfully performed and very listenable outing! First recording on Summit reached #12 on the JazzWeek Radio Chart. Miller began playing the piano by ear at the age of three. Soon after his move from New York to San Francisco, he met percussionist Bill Belasco and the two have been inseparable ever since. During the past decade, the duo has been graced by the presence of, and inspired by, renowned bassist Mario Suraci. Rebecca DuMaine began her career as an actress in New York. After moving to the Bay Area in Summer 2010, she reconnected with her love of jazz music and has been playing with the trio consistently.
Featured Artists:
Dave Miller: piano; Mario Suraci: bass; Bill Belasco: drums; Rebecca DuMaine: vocals
Track Listing:
Deed I Do • Moonlight Saving Time • I Love Being Here With You • I Like Men • Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars • Problem-Jay Leonhart • The Trolley Song • Isn’t It a Lovely Day • Frim Fram Sauce • Rhode Island • All I Do Is Dream of You • The Boy Next Door
Patricia Barber
Smash
By Thom Jurek
Patricia Barber is a crack jazz pianist, an innovative composer, a singular vocal stylist, and among the most original lyricists/song-poets to come down the pipe in 40 years. Her use of metaphor and metonymy is woven inextricably into her trademark melodies, which create mental and sonic images that evoke insight and emotion. Smash, Barber's debut for Concord, is comprised of original material performed by an excellent band that includes guitarist John Kregor, bassist Larry Kohut, and drummer Jon Deitemyer. The predominant subject matter of these songs is love's loss: the frustrated desire, grief, acceptance, longing, and healing its aftermath brings. Barber is as empathic and insightful as a depth psychologist. Her language is rich, precise, and devoid of trite sentimentality. Lyrically, these songs are wound with the elastic imagery of poetry, but their rhyme schemes are taut, given air by the fluidity of her jazz. Opener "Code Cool" is introduced by Deitemyer's snare and hi-hat in a constant thrum that emulates the pulse of electronic dance music. It's underscored by a one-note vamp from Kohut. Barber's piano illustrates with a series of glissando chords as Kregor fills the space expressionistically, highlighting the well of images and urgency in lyrics which reference science, Keats, and medical treatment before concluding she is "...Michaelangelo's David/Tested and worn..." Barber employs space between sections, stilling the proceeding with a single chord, before that pulse returns to her protagonist's realization that she needs to fake it until she makes it: "I will live/As if/I were loving." "The Wind Song" is a brooding, mysterious ballad, whose lyric drama is spacious, highlighted by brushed symbols, acoustic guitar, nearly gossamer pianism, and a physical bassline to bind it to earth. In the title track's first half, the piano and bass offer the tender illustration of "the sound of a heart breaking..." But at the halfway point, the physical fury of that emotion is laid bare by Kregor's screaming electric guitar solo, which allows for the held, breathless emotional power in this and all the previous songs, release. The companion piece is "Scream," where a jazz piano ballad opens into a nearly full-blown rocker. "Redshift" is a crystalline bossa nova; its lyrics unite love's loss with physics in clever, hip associations punctuated by a syncopated groove. "Bashful" is a swinging post-bop instrumental that features great soloing by everyone. "Missing" is introduced by Kregor's acoustic and Barber's sparse piano. It's a musically metaphorical illustration of the tune's subject matter: waiting in vain, hoping against hope that the truth of loss isn't, in fact, true. It's raw, vulnerable, and fearful. Kregor's gorgeous solo and Kohut's economical bassline offer room for Barber's piano to illuminate the lyric with tenderness.
Smash is an extraordinary achievement. Here, jazzis popular music without being anything other than itself. Its depth, creativity, searing poetry, and artisan musicianship make it a peerless accomplishment.
Vince Mendoza
Smash is an extraordinary achievement. Here, jazzis popular music without being anything other than itself. Its depth, creativity, searing poetry, and artisan musicianship make it a peerless accomplishment.
Blauklang
By Glenn Astarita
For jazz aficionados, composer/arranger Vince Mendoza's artisanship is a well-known entity. However, he's also enamored the works of pop-rock stars of note, including Joni Mitchell, Elvis Costello and Sheryl Crow. Mendoza is a master-craftsman who possesses a keen ear to complement his vivid imaginative powers, characteristics that are fastidiously transmitted throughout this rather wondrous 2008 release.
The English translation for the German album title is "blue sound," and emanates from a painting by German artist Ernst Wilhelm Nay (1902-1968). Mendoza's original compositions, sans Miles Davis' opening classic, "All Blues," duly paint a multihued musical portraiture that luminously intimates various shades of blue. Recorded at both a German studio and music festival, the artist employs some of the finest Euro-jazz instrumentalists along with guitarist Nguyen Le and drummer Peter Erskine, who round out the strings and horns based ensemble.
With lush textures, medium tempo swing vamps and multilayered arrangements, Mendoza conveys numerous shades of blue, especially on "All Blues," where supple horns provide counterpoint to Le's somewhat elusive and loosely based reckoning of the primary theme. In other regions of sound and scope, Mendoza implements buoyant undercurrents amid symphonic-like opuses.
Mendoza's "Ollie Mention" is constructed up from a hauntingly beautiful theme that features a simple melody and rippling strings passages, as Le ups the ante via his angular riffing atop the ensemble's layered choruses. "Movement II" of the six-part "Bluesounds" features French hornist Arkady Shilkloper's triumphant lines, performed above a flourishing background, while elsewhere the contrasting hues and shadings are abetted by Markus Stockhausen's velvety solo spot.
With four Grammy awards under his hat, Mendoza may well be in line for number five with this gleaming masterwork.
Track Listing:
By Glenn Astarita
For jazz aficionados, composer/arranger Vince Mendoza's artisanship is a well-known entity. However, he's also enamored the works of pop-rock stars of note, including Joni Mitchell, Elvis Costello and Sheryl Crow. Mendoza is a master-craftsman who possesses a keen ear to complement his vivid imaginative powers, characteristics that are fastidiously transmitted throughout this rather wondrous 2008 release.
The English translation for the German album title is "blue sound," and emanates from a painting by German artist Ernst Wilhelm Nay (1902-1968). Mendoza's original compositions, sans Miles Davis' opening classic, "All Blues," duly paint a multihued musical portraiture that luminously intimates various shades of blue. Recorded at both a German studio and music festival, the artist employs some of the finest Euro-jazz instrumentalists along with guitarist Nguyen Le and drummer Peter Erskine, who round out the strings and horns based ensemble.
With lush textures, medium tempo swing vamps and multilayered arrangements, Mendoza conveys numerous shades of blue, especially on "All Blues," where supple horns provide counterpoint to Le's somewhat elusive and loosely based reckoning of the primary theme. In other regions of sound and scope, Mendoza implements buoyant undercurrents amid symphonic-like opuses.
Mendoza's "Ollie Mention" is constructed up from a hauntingly beautiful theme that features a simple melody and rippling strings passages, as Le ups the ante via his angular riffing atop the ensemble's layered choruses. "Movement II" of the six-part "Bluesounds" features French hornist Arkady Shilkloper's triumphant lines, performed above a flourishing background, while elsewhere the contrasting hues and shadings are abetted by Markus Stockhausen's velvety solo spot.
With four Grammy awards under his hat, Mendoza may well be in line for number five with this gleaming masterwork.
Track Listing:
All Blues; Lo Rossinyol; Habanera; Blues for Pablo; Ollie Mention; Bluesounds Movement I; Bluesounds Movement II; Bluesounds Movement III; Bluesounds Movement IV; Bluesounds Movement V; Bluesounds Movement VI.
Personnel:
Personnel:
Nguyen Le: guitar; Markus Stockhausen: trumpet; Claudio Puntin: clarinets, saxophones; Steffen Schorn: clarinets, saxophonies; Frank Sackenheim: saxophones; Arkady Shilkloper: French Horn; Jon Sass: tuba; Lars Danielsson: bass; Ulla Van Daelen: harp; Peter Erskine: drums; Christopher Dell: vibraphone; String Quartet Red Urg 4: Gerdur Gunnarsdottir: violin; Christine Rox: violin; Thorunn Osk Marinosdotir: viola; Daniel Raabe: cello.
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