Tom Rainey Obbligato, Stella by Starlight ****

It is often highly stimulating to hear avant-gardists play standards. Everything sounds different and yet there is regularly a glimmer of recognition, a shard of light that illuminates the new ideas created to run with the evergreens. In other …

Published: 21 Apr 2021. Updated: 2 years.

It is often highly stimulating to hear avant-gardists play standards. Everything sounds different and yet there is regularly a glimmer of recognition, a shard of light that illuminates the new ideas created to run with the evergreens. In other words nothing is taken for granted and a certain dismantling and recomposition adds new insights whereas more safety-minded players might instead take a highly reverential, verging on the orthodox, approach. Take drummer Tom Rainey Obbligato's fine live treatment of Victor Young's 'Stella by Starlight' from the 1940s that is drawn from standards album Untucked in Hannover. The main focus is provided winningly by trumpeter Ralph Alessi but the twists and turns within the group interplay upset the applecart in terms of accents, the souped-up harmonic reworkings and the rubato without being at all contrary. It is impossible to not think of Miles Davis playing the piece. Listen to both and you can see how much a radical individual vision Obbligato's is and how their treatment stands tall for the jazz of today, not as 1950s nostalgia, via their own experience and imagination. Tom Rainey, top. Photo: via Bandcamp. Out now on Intakt

Tags:

Nigel Mooney fundraiser approaches crunch point

70 per cent towards the target but there's not long to go. Irish music fans well know just what a remarkably inspiring sound comes out of the guitar of Nigel Mooney playing the blues and jazz. On the move with a fundraiser for the fine prospect …

Published: 21 Apr 2021. Updated: 2 years.

Next post

70 per cent towards the target but there's not long to go.

Irish music fans well know just what a remarkably inspiring sound comes out of the guitar of Nigel Mooney playing the blues and jazz. On the move with a fundraiser for the fine prospect that is Mooney's Blues click through to be involved.