Search - Alan Pasqua :: My New Old Friend

I guess ECM doesn't have a lock on gorgeous piano trios afte

Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 06/24/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Here's a homegrown session everyone taken by the beauty and delicacy of Tord Gustavsen, Vassilis Tsabropoulos, Marcin Wasilewski, EST, and other European piano trios can be proud of. With My New Old Friend, Alan Pasqua has produced a disc that in many ways surpasses the best the Europeans have to offer.



Pasqua, though not that well known in jazz circles, despite his having produced a handful of accomplished discs on smaller West Coast labels and having been a mainstay (on synth!) of Tony Williams' 70s band, here proves that he deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the foremost jazz pianists of the day. For example, it's fascinating to compare his take of Charlie Chaplin's standard, "Smile," with Brad Mehldau's from his recent disc, Anything Goes. Whereas Mehldau brilliantly mines the piece's inherent irony, Pasqua goes for an entirely different feeling, a kind of wistfulness bordering on tragedy, lending the tune an almost unbearable poignancy. Playing the familiar melody with the lightest and most tender touch, he undergirds it with dark, dense, and dissonant chord voicings, creating a mood of shattered serenity and faded love. Combine that with the extremely subtle bass and drum stylings of Messrs Darek Oles and Peter Erskine, and you have a revelatory reworking of a famous standard.



The three other standards, "You Must Believe in Spring," "All the Things You Are," and "Body and Soul," are each handled with a similar delicacy and attention to detail. Indeed, the trio locks in with such a very high level of musical conversation and group interaction that it almost seems as if they've been playing together forever. Pasqua and Erskine have shared the bandstand and recording studio for some time now, but newcomer Oles, fast becoming a mainstay on the West Coast jazz scene, adds an entirely new and welcome dimension.



The six Pasqua originals give nothing away to the standards. It is as a composer, perhaps even more than as a leader and instrumentalist, that Pasqua makes his strongest impression. His tunes have a dancing freshness and lilt about them that both immediately ingratiates and makes a lasting impression. That, perhaps, is the disc's greatest accomplishment: it is not only beautiful, but memorable. One keeps wanting to return to it to recapture the wonderful moods it creates, even as it regularly produces music of consequence--a rare and welcome accomplishment in any category of musical endeavor.



Highest recommendation, and Kudos to Cryptogramophone for getting such glorious music from these veterans."

So beautiful it brought me to tears...

Kate Gary | California | 08/02/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I love this album because Alan Pasqua is so passionate about his music. Even his improv is constant melodies."