Search - Warren Bernhardt :: Reflections

It's a matter of artistic range . . . & plenty of it!

Nils Young | Medway, OH USA | 12/04/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I have a friend from Eastern Turkistan. This last Thanksgiving when he & his wife were here, I was showing of my new soprano sax & playing Warren's Trio CD. My friend had been introduced to jazz music for the first time a few months earlier. He was amazed to learn then that some people can just pick up and instrument & make neat stuff come out of it. This time he told me that he had started listening to a jazz station on his way to and from work. That was pretty much all it took.



I ordered another copy of the Trio CD for him & a copy of Reflections for myself, planning on my Christmas gifts. When I got the Reflections CD I realized that I'm going to have to buy a copy of that one for my friend as well.



Only a few weeks earlier my son & I were out somewhere & I had a tape of the Trio album on the car sound system. I mentioned that if I were 40 years younger & more dedicated & patient . . . My son finished the sentence for me. "You'd want to play like that."



This is some serious music, this music that comes out of Warren's creative soul. There is so much beautiful technical purity in his music. There is so much exploration of range on the piano, range that often goes unnoticed & unplayed by other musicians. Like many others, I don't understand why this marvelous musician isn't getting serious, repeated air time on jazz stations around the world. For such gentleness, such depth of emotion, such explorative & concentrated music to go unnoticed is nearly criminal.



None of us lasts forever. I hope that Warren & his music get noticed before it's another archive of one person's presence on this earth giving joy to the heart in music like this.

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