The well-known trio led by jazz organist Larry Goldings, which includes guitarist Peter Bernstein and drummer Bill Stewart, has started their adventures back in 1991 with the album Intimacy of the Blues.
Toy Tunes is their twelfth album, and like has been happening before, includes originals penned by all the three musicians, jazz standards, and other remarkable compositions, products of creative minds like saxophonist Wayne Shorter and pianist Carla Bley.
The trio opens the session with “Fagen”, an easy-going ride marked by an affable melody, that Goldings dedicates to the adult contemporary rock singer and keyboardist Donald Fagen, one of the two co-founders of Steely Dan. One can enjoy a sweet relaxation in this song, which leisurely unfolds …show more content…
Both the standard “I’m In The Mood For Love” and Charles Strouse’s “Maybe”, a number from his Broadway musical Annie, follow similar structural alignments, with Goldings designing the A sections of the theme and Bernstein taking care of the Bs. The latter piece spreads a swinging perfume that favors the rounded post-bop trajectories of the guitarist. After the respective improvisations, guitarist and organist team up by alternating eight bars of logical, creative phrasing before Stewart’s tasteful attacks.
Shorter’s “Toy Tune” is presented with less 30 seconds than the original version, which dated from 1980, and comes wrapped in the same sophisticated harmonic complexity. However, I missed the sound of the saxophone and the tune didn’t touch me as much as Carla Bley’s “And Now The Queen”, a beautiful four-bar melody reiterated with a mutable expressionistic touch. This song, tackled many times by pianist Paul Bley in solo mode, loses its reflective nicety in detriment of a futuristic organ-driven experimentalism. It never loses its achingly emotional quality,
Toy Tunes is their twelfth album, and like has been happening before, includes originals penned by all the three musicians, jazz standards, and other remarkable compositions, products of creative minds like saxophonist Wayne Shorter and pianist Carla Bley.
The trio opens the session with “Fagen”, an easy-going ride marked by an affable melody, that Goldings dedicates to the adult contemporary rock singer and keyboardist Donald Fagen, one of the two co-founders of Steely Dan. One can enjoy a sweet relaxation in this song, which leisurely unfolds …show more content…
Both the standard “I’m In The Mood For Love” and Charles Strouse’s “Maybe”, a number from his Broadway musical Annie, follow similar structural alignments, with Goldings designing the A sections of the theme and Bernstein taking care of the Bs. The latter piece spreads a swinging perfume that favors the rounded post-bop trajectories of the guitarist. After the respective improvisations, guitarist and organist team up by alternating eight bars of logical, creative phrasing before Stewart’s tasteful attacks.
Shorter’s “Toy Tune” is presented with less 30 seconds than the original version, which dated from 1980, and comes wrapped in the same sophisticated harmonic complexity. However, I missed the sound of the saxophone and the tune didn’t touch me as much as Carla Bley’s “And Now The Queen”, a beautiful four-bar melody reiterated with a mutable expressionistic touch. This song, tackled many times by pianist Paul Bley in solo mode, loses its reflective nicety in detriment of a futuristic organ-driven experimentalism. It never loses its achingly emotional quality,