Word: pianos
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...story with their music. By comparison, Thursday’s performance of the Monterey Jazz Festival On Tour at the Berklee Perfomance Center, one of 36 nationwide concerts that will take place from February 5 to May 1, was a pleasant surprise. The show, which featured Kenny Barron on piano, Regina Carter on violin, Kurt Elling on vocals, Russell Malone on guitar, Kiyoshi Kitagawa on bass, and Johnathan Blake on drums, featured a beautiful display of some of the best mainstream jazz musicianship on today’s scene. The concert wasn’t hip, and it certainly didn?...
Carter’s duet with Barron to “Georgia on My Mind” was one of the high points of the evening. They began with tense, elastic pauses, counterpointed by Barron’s minimalist stride piano underpinning. Carter emerged pure and sonorous, producing a cascading arpeggio of longing notes that caressed the classic tune. Barron interspersed her melody with clear notes, striking the keys to produce an insistent urgency. Barron and Carter weren’t so much in synthesis as symbiosis, each thoughtfully responding to the other in a manner that gripped the entire...
...Falling off Lavender Bridge,” in which quiet and underwhelming music masked angry self-loathing lyrics. However, “Life is Sweet! Nice to Meet You” is a confused record. It is comprised of angry break-up ballads and swelling choruses interspersed with gentler piano sonatas and strummed ukuleles. The album’s lyrics are often predictably regular, which is disappointing given the innovative songwriting...
...Guns of Highsmith,” a track whose chorus is the confused, and eventually annoying “Hurts to be the one who’s always feeling sad / Oh just stop complaining, Oh just stop complaining.” Left alone with nothing but a bare piano accompaniment, the lyrics feel whiney and self-indulgent instead of meaningful...
...rhythmic accuracy and a robotic inability to feel—it’s hard to imagine human beings creating this record. This is particularly problematic seeing as “Soldier of Love” eschews pure electronica and trip-hop for more traditional instrumentation—guitar, piano, drums and bass are at the heart of the record—which would intuitively present a more natural and human presence. This lack of feeling is not helped by the fact that Sade write obvious, vacuous shells of songs and then attempt to save them through intricate production which...