Three’s not a crowd…
Post bopping vets Martin Wind/b, EdNeumeister/tb and Jim McNeely/p form a rich and lyrical trio on a mix of originals and standards on this recent release. McNeely, a vet of stints with Getz and Phil Woods, is in supreme form, here, clean and classy on his own “H iatus” and in getting nimble with Wind on a sonata’d “in The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning”. He steps out for Wind and Neumeister to plunge deeply into “Blame It On My Youth”, with Wind bowing with the wah waing Neumeister and dark ivroied McNeely for “Gmunden”. The team has fun on a bopping “Bittersweet” and creates soft pastels for “Remember October 13th”. It sounds easy here, but this kind of stuff is like watching Astaire dance-it takes years to look this relaxed.
Leave it to French pianist and composer Dimitri Landrain to give a bona fide tribute to Argentine composer Astor Piazzola. He joins together with Jim Robertson/b and Keith Balla for a collection of originals in the flavor of the South American master. There are a couple seductive sambas, such as “Eight Years” and the joyful “ O Carnaval” that percolate with enthusiasm, while “Astor’s Place is richly harmonized collection of tensions built up and released. The rhumba’d “De Buen Tono” is a dancer’s paradise, with “Lovers In The Rain” a soft and fluffy candlelight of romance. Landrain has a warm touch, working well with Balla’s brushes on the tribute to an Ellingtonian on “Waltz For Billy”. The age of romance.