Strange but blue

There's such a beautiful piano introduction here on 'Hymn to Papa'. I feared ahead of the saxophone coming in, because you just know the piano player is leading up to a moment, that the sound would not live up to the beginning. If anything, and …

Published: 1 May 2020. Updated: 3 years.

There's such a beautiful piano introduction here on 'Hymn to Papa'. I feared ahead of the saxophone coming in, because you just know the piano player is leading up to a moment, that the sound would not live up to the beginning. If anything, and ending all catastrophizIng, it just gets better. Tenor saxophonist Cecilie Strange is the leader and main focus here and yet this enlarges to inspired group play in the moment (the pianist is Peter Rosendal) and the format is piano trio surrounding the sax with bassist Thommy Andersson coming through once the first solo sax solo is over and he projects an organic earthy feel to what he is doing that really enhances the very New Melodic and simply conveyed sound. Think the atmosphere conjured up on a Jakob Bro record perhaps as a parallel running that these fellow Danes produce delving into a distant Coltranian universe in all their imagining. Jakob Høyer on drums reminds me of the late great Norwegian drummer Jon Christensen. Blue is out via April records on 29 May. 'Hymn to Papa' is a less-is-more slice of soulful darkness. SG

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Thoughts on Nomad, the lead-off track from Andrew McCormack's upcoming Solo

'Nomad' from Andrew McCormack's Solo (Ubuntu) due in June shows a different side of the pianist-composer's personality. The folky melody that initially emerges is like a rural dance dressed in modernist colours, the harmonies and aesthetic over the …

Published: 1 May 2020. Updated: 3 years.

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'Nomad' from Andrew McCormack's Solo (Ubuntu) due in June shows a different side of the pianist-composer's personality.

The folky melody that initially emerges is like a rural dance dressed in modernist colours, the harmonies and aesthetic over the first few minutes leaning towards Bartók's 'Suite for Piano'.

Known for his mainstream jazz work with Kyle Eastwood and more avant garde incarnation playing duos with Jason Yarde, this track locates his approach firmly on the avant side.

The scope of the piece changes after a couple of minutes and the lapping expansiveness takes on more of an impressionist Debussy-like reverie (towards the 3 minute mark).

Can this piece actually be seen more within a classical frame? Perhaps. But not quite. And the album leans overtly to jazz with such inclusions as a version of Thelonious Monk's 'We See'.

Dull genre considerations aside, and to some anyway solo piano albums are a genre on to themselves, regardless, the quiet detailed calm the pianist conjures up towards the four-minute mark works without any baggage of what it should or should not resemble.

New to McCormack? Head back firstly to 2006's Telescope on the now inactive Dune label, all that label's physical formats are hard-to-find collector's items, you can hear there where next generation pianists such as Joe Armon-Jones were first coming from.

Andrew McCormack, above. Press shot