The pile gets bigger every day. Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but having done nothing my whole life except listen to music and tell people about it, it's a great problem to have. Some worthy artist (like Michael Gallant or Alphonse Mouzon) who honestly sent me his CD in the mail is going to get short-changed. It's just the nature of the game. Folks come over the house all the time and ask me if I really listen to every single one of these CDs. I tell them yes because if I didn't, I'd be a whore. Y'see, back in the day, I used to cart 'em all to my best friend who owned a used record store. Now, at 64, I have a complex will that divides my music between my wife, children, grandchildren, cousins and certain friends. And when I go--just like Janis Joplin left a cool grand for her friends to party out upon her demise never thinking she'd go at 27--I want my friends and family to have a pizza and sushi party at my house while they plumb the depths of my deep sea of music.
Back to the business at hand. Please be it known, though, before we start, that each and every one of these artists and CDs deserve more than a wrap-up sentence or two but, alas, as I said, it's the nature of the game for some hard-working artists to get short-changed. Take keyboardist/composer Michael Gallant and his trio, for example. His 2013 Completely debut showed more than just promise. He's followed it up with Live Plus One on his own Gallant Music label. Consisting of 11 live tracks performed in his DC hometown with his working trio of electric bassist Dmitry Ishenko and drummer Rob Mitzner (the +1 is acoustic bassist Pepe Gonzalez, his mentor since he was a teenager). Gallant, 35, a former Keyboard magazine Senior Editor, grew up loving rock's energy, especially grunge. Here, he plays his Nord Electro 3HP keyboard simultaneously with his Steinway piano to meld two voicings to exotic effect. Performing funk as well as solo stride piano, he's also big on dissonance to create an alternative side effect.
Drummer/composer/arranger Alphonse Mouzon was one of the early leading lights of 1970s jazz-rock fusion. His fifth album, Virtue, in 1977, features his speed-zip style on the skins and the great sax man Gary Bartz. Pilfering styles with substance, this joyride culminates in "The Mouzon Drum Suite: A) Jazz-Rock Improvisation, B) Out Of The Desert, C) Colors Of Africa and D) Total Swing." It's an 8:31 doozy, closing Virtue's re-release by MPS Records out of Germany. South Carolinian Mouzon, 66, runs his own Tenacious label now.
© 2024 Classicalite All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
