September 2012 - The New York City Jazz Record

Songs of Earth Jessica Williams (Origin)
Wherever You Are (Midnight Moods for Solo Piano)
Denny Zeitlin (Sunnyside)
The Noguchi Sessions Arturo O’Farrill (Zoho)
Contemplation Gabriel Zufferey (Bee Jazz)
by Donald Elfman
The four artists who make up this quartet of splendid
new solo piano recordings are careful and thoughtful
in their choice of both notes and spaces. The
performances collected here are clearly about
expression.
In concert at Seattle’s The Triple Door, on Songs of
Earth Jessica Williams’ concept and technique are
grand and symphonic but fall, as she rightly says, into
no category or genre. The individual pieces suggest a
full spectrum of moods and colors as does, says
Williams, the Earth. “Joe and Jane” is a kind of hymn
in tribute to the men and women in the military, the
mood sorrowful but also rhapsodic, working as a
hopeful prayer for peace. The one tune not composed
by Williams is John Coltrane’s “To Be”, where she
avoids any particular stylistic approach but seeks what
Coltrane means to her in terms of freedom and
invention. Williams’ latest influence, she notes, is
Spanish guitarist Carlos Montoya, disliked by critics
for straying from traditional form; his daring and
bravery in doing so inspires Williams on her dedicatory
tune “Montoya”. The pianist’s understanding is
revealed in her ability to suggest the mercurial passions
of the guitar and the Spanish forms he both played
with and transformed.
Denny Zeitlin has come a long way since he was
thought of as “the jazz psychiatrist”. He is a master
interpreter of song and his approach has developed
into one that is harmonically rich, intellectually
reflective and deeply lyrical. On Wherever You Are, the
notion of lyrical goes beyond its meaning of simply
songlike and melodic to one that celebrates the words
intoned by the human voice. These are the words of
the writers of the Great American Songbook, the
contemplative notions of love and longing that inform
the human experience. Zeitlin takes familiar and not-
so-familiar ballads and invests them with his own very
particular colors and shadings. He comes to us with a
deeply reharmonized “Body and Soul”, a dark and
mysterious reading, beautifully embellished to let the
listener hear it anew. Be prepared for a surprise with
Bobby Troup’s “The Meaning of the Blues” from the
Miles Davis album Miles Ahead. Zeitlin, informed by a
new reading of the lyrics, digs deep into the “tragedy
of loss”, as he calls it, and fashions an achingly intimate
rubato gem that unfolds with the slow and exquisite
pace of a work of nature. The theme only makes itself
evident as the piece winds to a close. Jobim also is
reworked as the pianist fuses “Quiet Nights” and
“How Insensitive” into one sensual poem of bittersweet
melancholy. It’s the pianist’s smart and ever-thoughtful
approach that finds new levels of expression in these
most familiar bossa nova chestnuts. Zeitlin also revisits
some of his originals - “Time Remembers One Time
Once” and “Wherever You Are” - and continues to
reveal insights about love and connection.
On The Noguchi Sessions, Arturo O’Farrill pays
tribute to the great Japanese-American artist Isamu
Noguchi. The pianist set up his instrument in a gallery
of the Noguchi Museum (in Long Island City) and
played a celebration to the “fragility” and “transience”
of our lives and even of our art in 12 affecting and
compelling performances ranging from originals by
the composer and works from the Spanish and Latin-
American canon to an exploration of Americana and
Irish roots and rarely performed tunes from the jazz
repertoire. In Stephen Foster’s “Oh! Susanna”, the
pianist takes the minstrel song, chock full of corny and
even horrid stereotypes, and finds a way to reflect an
American past honestly. One of the great and neglected
composers from this hemisphere is Cuban-born Ernesto
Lecuona. His “Siboney” is a tribute to an indigenous
Cuban people and O’Farrill feels it his duty to celebrate
that “before we got here, there were others”. The
rhythms of Cuba are present but they take an organic
role in the commanding power of the piano. O’Farrill’s
approach is more meditative but no less artful on “Oh
Danny Boy”, another look back at the past. O’Farrill is
a gifted composer as well, as is manifest in his
adventures with “simple chords and major triads”
coming from “Once I Had a Secret Love”and becoming
O’Farrill’s “Once I Had a Secret Meditation”. It’s a
brief and lovely tune, a touching set of intriguing
improvisations on the old tune.
Swiss-born Gabriel Zufferey has made
Contemplation, his first solo piano album, a grand,
ambitious excursion – 18 tunes, many of them
associated with some of the greatest names in jazz and
jazz piano. Zufferey makes these performances his
own thanks, in part, to brevity - none of these
performances is much longer than five minutes. The
five-four pulse of Paul Desmond’s “Take Five” is the
starting and staying point of this improvisation, which
never really states the melody except for the bridge.
Zufferey also offers a number of very brief interludes,
demonstrating his own adventurous work in miniature
composition for the keyboard. The young artist
discovers a new way to enter the world of Thelonious
Monk, finding “Trinkle Tinkle” at the center of a
maelstrom of sound, thus framing the melody in a way
not quite seen before. The same might be said of “Giant
Steps”, presented as a moody ballad in which the
familiar and complex line is only revealed after some
atmospheric soul-searching. Ellington’s “In a
Sentimental Mood” finds the old standard constructed
and deconstructed as if to make us think we’ve not
heard it before but hearkening to something we’re sure
we know. This pattern is indicative of the way Zufferey
gets to the heart of great tunes.
For more information, visit originarts.com,
sunnysiderecords.com, zohomusic.com and beejazz.com.
O’Farrill is at Saint Peter’s Sep. 12th and Birdland Sep.
30th and Sundays. See Calendar and Regular Engagements.
THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD | September 2012 21