Search - Dick Hyman, Randy Sandke :: Now & Again

Two distinctive talents

William A. Adams | Bainbridge Island, WA USA | 10/23/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Fifteen tunes are played with instinctive rhythm. Both the trumpet and the piano stand out as talents in their own right. Sandke on trumpet has a big full, rich sound like Wynton, sometimes right on the edge of exuberant fuzz. Hyman has lightning fingers. Both men really swing, drifting out then cutting to the infield like NASCAR drivers taking a corner. But the whole is not greater than the sum of the parts, for some reason. It's two very talented musicians playing together without saying much to each other. Enjoyable."

Double your pleasure

Bomojaz | South Central PA, USA | 06/05/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Dick Hyman, as great a piano player as he's always been, has managed to get even better with age. He's become more inventive and circumspect, and definitely is willing to take more musical chances. Whereas Randy Sandke tends to take a straight-and-narrow approach, Hyman is all over the place seeking out every nuance of meaning in the piece he's playing. Often here he begins tunes out of tempo or even surrealistically before Randy comes in to "normalize" their approach. He does this, for example, on YOU'D BE SO NICE TO COME HOME TO, and then plays a solo that emphasizes a pounding left hand, a la Dave McKenna: it's very effective. Sometimes his probing behind Sandke becomes so urgent that he captures our full attention and Randy's playing becomes secondary. But most of the time they play in tangent and compliment each other well.



WEATHERBIRD, is a good rendition of the Louis Armstrong-Earl Hines duet recording from 1928, not a direct copy, but a close reading of the original. Sandke's original THE WIZARD has a nice bop-ish theme, though Hyman strides on it for a while in his solo. LUCKY TO BE ME is a gorgeous tune that the two men give a church-like flavor to, and the final track, MAKIN' WHOOPEE, is a Hyman solo rendition that is unusually impressionistic and introspective for this tune. A lot of care and thought went into this CD - it's not just two guys blowing repeated jazz statements over standard tunes - and the results are most delightful and impressive. Definitely worth checking out."