Daily jazz blog, Marlbank

Yvonnick Prené and Geoffrey Keezer, Jobim's World, Sunnyside Records ***1/2

Gravitate to the less familiar of the Jobim's World material for most enjoyment and certainly wider elucidation from Yvonnick Prené, above left, and Geoffrey Keezer. A gentle way to begin the new week. Everything this year in terms of a jazz …

Published: 1 Jul 2024. Updated: 4 days.

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Gravitate to the less familiar of the Jobim's World material for most enjoyment and certainly wider elucidation from Yvonnick Prené, above left, and Geoffrey Keezer.

A gentle way to begin the new week. Everything this year in terms of a jazz album featuring harmonica heavily should be thought upon with Grégoire Maret and Romain Collin's Ennio in mind first and Ariel Bart's Deep Down next.

And now no slouches at all, Jobim's World - the clue is in the title - takes a different approach than the Ennio Morricone or Israeli folk influenced themes of our starting points of comparison. Apart from the Brazilian master Jobim (1927-94) at the centre of the album ripples of lateral thinking send us to complementary places musically in the company of these intimate duos. Chromatic harmonica virtuoso Paris born Yvonnick Prené, founder of the New York Harmonica School, is with Wisconsin born 53-year-old pianist Geoff Keezer (Art Blakey, Ray Brown, Art Farmer) whose Playdate we liked a good deal in 2022.

TURNING TO JOBIM HAS LESS OF A HARD BOP SENSE TO IT.

Prené's very different more hard bop rooted Listen! (also on Sunnyside) featuring Jeremy Pelt and Dayna Stephens came out last year.

Produced by Daniel Yvinec

It's all apparently effortlessly conveyed, produced by Daniel Yvinec known for his work directing the Orchestre National De Jazz in France in the late-noughties and early-2010s, and includes some of the tunes you expect to find on a Jobim album from the ubiquitous done-to-death 'A Girl From Ipanema' to 'Desafinado'. Inevitably you will delve deeper and see what the pair do to 'Wave' - a world away just as much from Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66 as Karryn Allyson's great recent version - on 'Vagues à Lames' for example - a complete refurbishment. Jobim's World also includes Pixinguinha and Benedito Lacerda's delightful 'Proezos De Solon' from the 1940s that has a masterfully sweeping introduction from Keezer.

Henri Salvador's 'Dans Mon île' that Caetano Veloso covered so meltingly in the 1980s is also here. The album also significantly sports arrangements by pianist Laurent Courthaliac, an intrinsic factor in how and why JW works so satisfyingly.

Tags: Reviews

Bernd Lhotzky, The Gallery Concerts III, Rag Bag, ACT ***1/2

We see ragtime as a music that is similar to jazz at first blush but fundamentally different because it's older and far more formal. You could listen to dozens of contemporary jazz piano dominated albums around at the moment and not hear any …

Published: 30 Jun 2024. Updated: 4 days.

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We see ragtime as a music that is similar to jazz at first blush but fundamentally different because it's older and far more formal. You could listen to dozens of contemporary jazz piano dominated albums around at the moment and not hear any influence of ragtime on them or even stride which shares some attributes in common.

It is more like concert music in a sense of one of any number of historic styles that might get played in a classical concert hall more.

And yet the style does have recent form as a catalyst towards new creativity. These days you get acts like Postmodern Jukebox who use ragtime as a basic often cheesily relentless underpinning arranged in a hybrid way to incorporate just about any popular song melody you care think of over the top.

That isn't the approach at all on The Gallery Concerts III (Rag Bag) mercifully. It's instead solo piano from German pianist, Bavaria born, the French-German 53 year old Bernd Lhotzky who plays everything very properly and with a lot of taste. The tunes are his but clearly Scott Joplin is a significant jumping off point. 'Yara's Lazy Strut' is the tune we liked most and there is a good deal to dive into here certainly from a melodic point of view and to bask in the player's considerably high end technique. Lhotzky's silky, laidback style is easy to appreciate. But certainly it is an album that will have more appeal to anyone into trad jazz more than anything approaching bebop or beyond. And some fans of classical music with a crossover interest in ragtime probably will feel OK about this too. The reaction of the audience adds a little atmosphere to what isn't an aridly recorded po-faced recording feel at all. And that's a further additional factor in its favour.

Bernd Lhotzky, photo: Steinway & Sons