Search - Joe Lovano :: From the Soul

A great one

N. Dorward | Toronto, ON Canada | 02/04/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I've sort of lost track of Joe Lovano lately--haven't bothered to catch up with the recent tributes to Sinatra, Dameron & Caruso, for instance. That's not because I expect them to be bad albums--indeed, any album with Lovano on it is likely to be a contender--but because I get tired of the major-label approach to A&R in jazz, which almost inevitably ends up pushing artists willy-nilly down the tribute-album path. I recently put _From the Soul_ on the stereo again & it sounded as good as it did when it first came out: an album palpably in touch with "the tradition", but not in any obvious way a "concept album". The band is one specially assembled for this album, throwing Lovano together with Michel Petrucciani, the diminutive French pianist who was also a Blue Note artist at the time. What's startling is how uncharacteristically Petrucciani plays; normally an expansive, sunny-tempered pianist, he's surprisingly oblique & hard-bitten here in response to Lovano's lateral-thinking romanticism. Petrucciani sounds like a hybrid of Paul Bley (there's passages of his solo on "Evolution"--a Lovano original, not the Moncur classic--which strongly suggest to me the pianist had been studying Bley's _Footloose!_ carefully at the time) & Herbie Hancock. The rest of the band is the unimpeachable Dave Holland & Ed Blackwell, who--despite being virtually at death's door during these sessions--is absolutely phenomenal, whether on the ballad "Portrait of Jenny" or the alto/drums duet "Modern Man".Lovano pays tribute on this album above all to Ornette Coleman, who certainly lies behind the stripped-down, freeish performances "Evolution", "Modern Man" & "Fort Worth" (the latter was O.C.'s birthplace). There's also a fair dose of Coltrane here, not just on "Central Park West" (which Lovano tackles on soprano rather than tenor, which was what Trane used on the original recording); & Lovano also delivers a reading of Monk's "Work" on soprano which is obviously in homage to Steve Lacy, who gave a notable reading on his first Prestige album. Yet, for all the man's multi-instrumentalism, his tenor's the thing, with its often querulously high-pitched lines and chromatically slippery runs. "Body and Soul" (tellingly, not only a tenor setpiece but also, like "Central Park West", on _Coltrane's Sound_) is done as a tenor-piano duet, & is one of the great jazz performances of the 1990s: one of those rare readings of a familiar standard that manage to make it come alive again.A great album: it's saddening to think that, only 11 years after the disc was released, two of the four players on it have passed away."

One of the best of recent times

George Grella | Brooklyn | 04/21/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"A superb record by Joe Lovano. The selection of tunes and his style of playing encompass almost the entire history of jazz. Lovano's rich tone and imagination are not fettered by any misconception of what jazz is supposed to be, instead he goes for what the moment of expression calls for. This was not a working band for him, which makes the supple flow between solost and support all that more remarkable"

YES HE PLAYS FROM HIS SOUL

K. Prousalis | drama GREECE | 06/01/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"JOE LOVANOs best work ,warm rich and ,expressive.Blackwell on drums ,HOLLAND on bass and the amazing MICHELL PETRUCCIANI on piano give the best of their best .TOP NOTCH JAZZ LISTENING."