jazzmatazz | upcoming | recent | reviews | books | links | musicians | labels | sale list | stores | philly jazz
previous review | reviews home | next review
Tempered modern jazz. Jazz where the piano describes or details songs that are as much moods as they are tunes, lyrical in the tradition of Bill Evans as adapted by Keith Jarrett. This is the achievement of the Iceland-born
Sunna Gunnlaugs, accomplished with the sometimes lush, always potent, and textured reed play of Tony Malaby, a fixture in the New York jazz scene and a particularly eloquent performer.
Gunnlaug’s compositions range between simple statements of melody and platforms for exploration, but always with that Jarrett-like sensibility, one where it is ambience and the importance of each note that counts. Her own keyboard styling features fluid one-hand, single note lines that carry the music along to a point where Malaby steps in. At first the piano drops out and then quietly shades him and the horn pursues imaginative, forceful lines, a process best put to use on the title piece and on "Bad Seeds." And after the horn’s solo, the piano’s caressing touch is a quiet yet articulate rejoinder.
While not every piece is at this level of intensity in terms of design or execution ("The People of my Heart" has a tendency towards the maudlin), Mindful is top-quality music. Gunnlaug’s band (with bassist Drew Grass and drummer Scott McLemore) is intuitively and sophisticatedly supportive, and the rhythm section is much more than its title implies, with both bass and drums able to step to the fore as soloists as well as lending strength to the piano and horn.
Upon my tenth listening (this CD had that magnetic a draw), I realized what its inner strength was-every player, and in particular the bass and drummer, is creating at every moment. There is no soloist with a rhythm-section comping, but a continual flow of multi-musician improvising. This characteristic made Mindful an excellent statement of thoughtful, emotionally satisfying jazz, a true find.
— Jules Epstein, April 2002
Release Date: 12 March 2002
Mindful (Sunny Sky Records)
please send comments to jazzmatazz@att.net
last update 8 April 2002