JAZZ

Recent CD releases reviewed

BRAD MEHLDAU
Live in Tokyo/Nonesuch
**

While over the years Mehldau's solo performances have become, like the marathon, a test of the listener's endurance as much as the pianist's, this latest, which also marks a change of label, is more user-friendly than usual. The touch, especially the left hand, is - shall we say? - as emphatic and the crescendoes as relentlessly defined as ever, but he's also allowed a more overt lyricism to emerge. It's still the many-faceted, uncompromising approach of a musician gnawing brilliantly at the material to extract the creative marrow, but it does grow on you; From This Moment On is a hugely inventive romp and even the almost-20 minutes of the old Radiohead favourite, Paranoid Android, is, like the entire CD, undeniably impressive.
www.nonesuch.com
Ray Comiskey

Hammond man Smith grooves to the manner born and his accomplices fit the requirements of the music like a glove; he and guitarist Peter Bernstein are backed with irresistible verve by rhythm guitarist Rodney Jones, with Greg Hutchinson and Fukushi Tainaka alternating on drums. And though the groove is infectious, both Smith and Bernstein are sophisticated players who know their way around harmonically, know the value of space and how to build a solo as part of a well-shaped group performance. In a programme of eight Smith originals, plus Horace Silver's eponymous Serenade, they reaffirm the virtues of this kind of down-home jazz, with Bernstein, especially, in great form and Hutchinson playing like a man possessed. www.palmetto-records.com

Ray Comiskey

GEORGE SHEARING
Like Fine Wine/Mack Avenue
***

Still tasty, but a vintage that's showing its age a bit. Shearing long ago found a particular musical vine and has cultivated it assiduously since. It's fed by the Great American Song Book and jazz originals, one of which, John Coltrane's Giant Steps, is treated here as a bossa whose gentle pace allows the pianist to saunter elegantly through its harmonic minefield. With a fine guitarist, Reg Schwager, and Shearing's longtime colleague, Neil Swainson, on bass, the trio format allows him to air his signature sound, and his ear for harmony is as persuasively lovely as ever. But anno domini is nibbling at his technique and both Schwager and the marvellous Swainson's swinging contributions inadvertently emphasise how Shearing's music is self-consciously neat and manicured.
www.mackaverecords.com
Ray Comiskey