Search - Tony Moreno, Bill Gerhardt, Mike Holstein :: Trio Music

The trio dance and duel, float and punctuate with great skil

snowbound | Florida | 09/27/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Tony Moreno's Trio Music: The naked city is full of sordid tales: greed, lust, corruption, angst, glee, misery, madness, all the stuff that makes a great jazz record. What? You question that assertion? Drummer/leader Tony Moreno is one of the city's denizens of the night, a street worker who has performed in all of Manhattan's jazz clubs and jazz alleys, a tough guy with a million tales to tell. A few of those tales are heard on his debut as a leader, Trio Music (Art of Life Records). Accompanied by fellow jazz travelers Bill Gerhardt on piano and Mike Holstein on acoustic bass, Moreno imagines a New York where people still listen to Erroll Garner, read books by O. Henry, and generally stay in their habitats 'til the town cools off.



Though recorded in New York, Trio Music was actually inspired by that most civil of American cities, Asheville, North Carolina. Like all good travelers, Moreno observed the locals and drank at their watering holes, and came away sated.



"In May of 2006 I received a composing commission from the Jazz Composer's Forum based in Asheville, North Carolina," he writes in the albums liner notes. "I decided to write a suite of pieces based on my reflections of the city. Asheville is surrounded by great natural beauty: the Blue Ridge Mountains, Douglas Falls and Mount Cammerer and has historically been an important contributor to American Arts and Letters. Of the seven pieces that comprise the suite, five are represented on this recording. Bill and Mike's pieces fit perfectly both thematically, with all the previously written material, and as part of the group sound we were developing."



The selected MP3, "Float," perfectly represents Moreno's trio. As influenced by Euro styles as classic American post-bop, the trio dance and duel, float and punctuate with great skill and panache, as if operating a sail boat on the high seas. There is much wind in their collective sails, the music flowing in swells and rainy impressions. Though once a proponent of the Elvin Jones school of drumming ferocity, Moreno is more light and supple in style here, his shimmering cymbal work especially propulsive.



Ken Micallef - Better Living Through MP3

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Interactive trio Jazz of the highest level indeed!

Jazz Fan in PA | USA | 09/18/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Your CD arrived in todays mail. I've listened to it once and said without exageration, this is the surprise of the year! A giant step forward in interactive Trio-music indeed. When Mark Reboul sent me 2 yet unreleased recordings of Bill Gerhardt I immediately knew that an absolute master is at work, a composer and pianist in the first rank. After listening to your recording I must say that I was slightly wrong. Bill is not in the first rank, he is the first in the first rank! The same can --from my point of view-- be said of your percussion work and Mike's playing the bass. The conception of the album is breathtaking from A to Z, the interaction is unmatched by any other trio. And the music is full of surprises, a class of its own without clichés with chord progressions, with melodic and rhythmic turns that are fresh, unparalleled and unheard in the history of jazz. And the music is not only interesting, it's beautiful and charming as well. Thank you so much for making this music happen and for preserving this document that makes us long for many follow-ups, hopefully. Thanks so much once again to make such beautiful music happen.



"If it is art, then it is not for all. And when it is for all, then it is not art." The first part of this striking quotation of the great composer Arnold Schoenberg fits perfectly the CD "Trio Music" of the three artists Tony Moreno (dm), Bill Gerhardt (p) and Mike Holstein (b). New York drummer Moreno is widely known to Jazz aficionados as a sensitive percussionist in the tradition of Elvin Jones and Paul Motian. Highly talented professionals Gerhardt and Holstein, both very active in North Carolina, are truly "musicians' musicians". In the business this is the highest possible praise of distinction among the community of Jazz musicians. And the gathering of these three exceptional musicians resulted in an artistically stellar recording session full of unexpected surprises: Interactive trio Jazz of the highest level indeed!



Jürg Sommer

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