(Tony Pacini, piano; Dan Balmer, guitar; Ed Bennett, bass; Mel Brown, drums)
Mel Brown has been THE jazz drummer in Portland, Oregon for many decades now, and he has fronted many different ensembles. This quartet, which plays regularly at Portland’s top jazz room, Jimmy Mak’s, is a vibrant and energetic quartet of three skilled players, all intuitively supported by the tasteful anchoring of Mel Brown’s great timekeeping on the traps. (There’s a track here by Dan Balmer dedicated to Jimmy.) Their previous album, Girl Talk, was a critical success and the band members were anxious to get back into the studio to do another. This time, though, they added a small audience in the studio to bring a bit of the live experience excitement into the procedure. It seems to have worked, because this album burns!
Ellington’s Prelude to a Kiss gets a very speedy bit of swinging – the most uptempo I’ve heard – but works well in pianist Pacini’s fine arrangement. It also has a great guitar solo by Dan Balmer. Charlie Chaplin’s lovely theme Smile has been showing up on a number of recent jazz releases, and the quartet does a laid-back, romantic and lengthy musing on it, featuring some fine piano solos. The playing and everything about the CD is the equal and perhaps better than much of what you’d find on the major jazz labels. I give it a high recommendation!
TrackList: Dandyish, Prelude to a Kiss, Yardbird Suite, First Light, One for Jimmy Mak, May Song, The Message, Smile, Ticondeep, Gone with the Wind.
– John Henry
