Harvey Mason - With All My Heart

[mikeweil]

This is an album of all acoustic piano trios, each with a different pianist/bassist combination.

Hank Jones, Cedar Walton, Kenny Barron, Bob James, Dave Grusin, Fred Hersch, Chick Corea, Brad Mehldau, Herbie Hancock, Mulgrew Miller and Monty Alexander are the pianists; Ron Carter, Dave Carpenter, Charlie Haden, George Mraz, Charnett Moffett, Eddie Gomez, Michael Valerio and Larry Grenadier are the bassists.

This review at Amazon.com sums it up very well. Excellent album!!!

*****

[mikeweil]

Still noone that has listened to this?

[mikeweil]

Here's that review I linked, to water some mouths:

A very nifty idea . . ., May 22, 2004

Reviewer:    J. Dennis "Longboard jazzer" (Monument, CO USA) -       

. . . brilliantly pulled off.

What?

Piano trios with a different pianist and bassist for each trio, the common denominator being drummer, leader, and conceptualist, Harvey Mason. Perhaps not all that different from what the late, great bassist Ray Brown did with his Some of My Best Friends Are . . . releases, where he'd invite a bunch of pianists, trumpeters, guitarists, etc., and each one would get a couple or three spotlight appearances.

The difference here is that none of the pianists (and only two of the bassists, Ron Carter [3] and Dave Carpenter [2]) gets more than one appearance. You'd think there'd be a lack of stylistic continuity. But that's not the case. Part of it is that Mason in his storied career has played with such a wide variety of musicians in such a wide variety of styles--everything from swing to bop to hard-bop to fusion to funk to pop--that he's always ready with just the right percussive approach to match these pianists' (and bassists') styles.

It helps, of course, that he's managed to corral some of the very top players: Kenny Barron, Chick Corea, Fred Hersch, Monty Alexander, Cedar Walton, Brad Mehldau, Mulgrew Miller, Herbie Hancock, and Hank Jones (as well as Bob James and Dave Grusin) for the piano chair; and Ron Carter, Eddie Gomez, Charnet Moffett, Larry Grenadier, Charlie Haden, and George Mraz (as well as Mike Valerio, and the aforementioned Dave Carpenter) on bass. The oddest pairing, certainly, is Bob James/Charlie Haden; it's also one of the most successful. They make "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" sound almost fresh--a monumental feat.

I don't think there's a clunker in the bunch. If Dave Grusin's take on "One Morning in May" is too bright, unsubtle, and emptily virtuoso--almost as if the fusion keyboardist is saying, "Look here, I can play this straightahead stuff as well as anybody"--it nevertheless contains some rich harmonic and rhythmic material, and features a quite enchanting bass solo from the relatively unknown Mike Valerio. Unfortunately, it comes right before Herbie Hancock's turn, who proceeds to blow Grusin out of the water with his incredible performance.

Highlights for me--and it's really hard to pick from such true riches--include Herbie Hancock's revelatory take on "Speak Like a Child," Monty Alexander's romp through "Swamp Fire," Fred Hersch's incredibly sensitive reading of "So Far, So Near," Brad Mehldau's brilliant reconfiguration of "Dindi," Kenny Barron's driving rendition of "Bernie's Tune," and Hank Jones's elegantly presented "Tess."

Along the way, Mason proves entirely capable of setting the exact right percussive table for these brilliant modern jazz interpreters, who, stylistically speaking, nearly run the gamut of modern jazz pianism.

I'm entirely taken by this disc. It surely represents a cornucopia of some of the very finest modern acoustic jazz practitioners around. Kudos to Harvey Mason for the concept; highest praise to those willing to invest in this somewhat dicey concept; and humble admiration before the prodigious talent so generously on display here.