Ultra melodic. Harmonies in the foreground, in the background. Even the drummer sounds melodic. Where in the World is in our top UK jazz list this year – read the full list:
Ollendorff who is just as fine a writer as he is a peerless guitarist needs no introduction to marlbank readers if you have read these articles among several on him that is: 2021 live review (Vortex); Open House (2023) reviewed (still his best album); an interview with the guitarist himself (2023); live (Hawk’s Well, 2023).
Where in the World introduces star US pianist Aaron “Invisible Cinema” Parks into the blend. Bassist Conor Chaplin and drummer James Maddren complete the sound. Parks also has a new album out on Blue Note Records called By All Means:
But I much prefer listening to him in this context with the O. Tunes are great, especially ‘Three Bridges’ which also was on the Ealing player’s meisterwerk Open House. To repeat myself Where in the World is ultra melodic. But and this is the crucial bit: it isn’t as sickly as a tea cake or worse ersatz smooth jazz or anything shite like that. In places it’s impossible not to think of Pat Metheny as on ‘Tokyo Waltz’ but Ollendorff’s skill is to have absorbed not copied what masters like Metheny have done. The philosopher’s stone is an alchemy, an aspiration, a dream. Everything here is golden creativity at its finest. Yeats: “O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,/How can we know the dancer from the dance?”
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