Tasty, more like 3.5 stars
Anthony Cooper | Louisville, KY United States | 02/26/2006
(3 out of 5 stars)
"Jeremy Pelt is an excellent trumpet player, and Identity is an album of orginal songs with an electronic flavor. Mr. Pelt uses some suble electronic effects on his trumpet in some songs, and there is a lot of electric piano. It's hardly as electronic as Nicholas Payton's "Sonic Trance", more in line with Dave Douglas' "Keystone". This is a good album, I give it 3.5 stars. If a few of the weaker songs were taken off, it would be a 4 star album on the strength of songs like "Re-Invention", "Suspicion", "Scorpio", and "Angular". The overall mood of the album is laid-back, similar to "Close To My Heart". Mr. Pelt can play fast, loud, and high with the best of them, but he seems to prefer playing tastier. If you're more curious about Jeremy Pelt, or this album, he has a ton of live downloads on his website."
A Near Miss
M. Murphy | birmingham, alabama United States | 09/15/2005
(3 out of 5 stars)
"Jeremy Pelt's follow up to the syrupy "Close to My Heart" works about half the time. While Pelt clearly has "chops" his composition skills are simply not up to the task of 73 minutes of music. Perhaps a standard or two or the addition of some other tunes could have allowed Pelt to do what he really does quite well,BLOW. Not that the cd doesn't have it's moments.It does. Pelt seems to shine in the more "cooperative" pieces like Eddie's Story and Eye of the Beholder.
Perhaps Mulgrew Miller[a Maxjazz regular] would have helped. As is the supporting cast supports but can't seem to elevate Pelt on several "fillers". While we're on the subject of "fillers" when did it become mandatory to produce 73 minutes of music.Clearly Identity suffers from having 3 or 4 too many mediocre tunes which should have been ommitted or replaced by better compositions.Other recent releases[Joshua Redman,Dave Douglas,etc] are guilty of excess tunes that seemed tossed in. Jeremy Pelt is close. If he can avoid the schmaltz of "all strings"[Close to My Heart] and modify the ambition of all original compositions[Identity],than he would have found a balance to showcase his large talent.
Perhaps the next time. I'm rooting for him. Not reccommended."