Latest CD releases reviewed
LASZLO GARDONY
Natural Instinct Sunnyside ****
Hungarian, but based in Boston for decades, Gardony is an exceptional pianist, not so much underrated as little-known, with a background in contemporary classical composers like Messaien, and a jazz one with adventurous players like Dave Liebman, Miroslav Vitous and Dave Holland. On this fine trio date with John Lockwood (bass) and Yoron Israel (drums), Gardony's playing flows with the unforced lyricism of a natural storyteller. There are no empty gestures, nothing for effect, yet his individuality makes its presence felt. Some gorgeous originals (Hidden Message, Thinking of Stella), the disconcerting Waking Dreams and the simple, childlike Me and My Echo, along with absorbing reworkings of Motherless Child and Softly as in a Morning Sunrise, show both Gardony's and the trio's combination of inventiveness and emotional accessibility. www.sunnysiderecords.com
HARRY ALLEN/JOE COHN
Hey Look Me Over Arbors ****
On this relaxed, warmly swinging mainstream date (originally issued in Japan as This Is . . . and now available with the new title) co-leaders Allen (tenor) and Cohn (guitar) reveal an intuitive understanding of each other's playing. It's a working group where they're joined by Joel Forbes (bass) and Chuck Riggs (drums). The repertoire, originals by Cohn's famous father, Al, an old Charlie Christian-Benny Goodman creation, and some seldom played standards, is unhackneyed. Most of all, Allen, in exceptional form here, has matured to where he is arguably the finest mainstream tenor saxophonist alive; having sloughed off the Getz influence, he has emphatically found his own voice, one that mainstream fans should find very much to their liking. www.arborsjazz.com
LOUIS SCLAVIS/LE QUATUOR HABANERA
L'Engrenage Alpha ***
Jazz is such a broad church now that to some the boundaries must seem to be receding to infinity, like the universe's edges after the Big Bang. And this meeting of Sclavis, the brilliant, idiosyncratic jazz reedman, with the all-saxophone classical Habanera quartet is somewhere out there, light years away. Despite the incorporation of his improvisations into their composed repertoire, the results are less absorbing than the intellectual justifications for the composed material and the approaches to it, a kind of philosophical pragmatism. This is not to say that the music is devoid of interest or event, or that these aren't superb players. It's just that the what emerges is, to these ears, not so much on the edges of anything as in some arid cul de sac of contemporary classical music. To each his own. http://uk.hmboutique.com
