Graham Reynolds

DUKE! Three Portraits of Ellington Innova

Innova is the imprint of the American Composer's Forum, and pianist Graham Reynolds is indeed best known as a composer, particularly of film scores (he wrote the music for A Scanner Darkly). But for such an accomplished composer, Reynolds's latest jazz offering is curious abrogation of responsibility. Three albums shoe-horned into one, it begins convincingly with Reynolds's Golden Arm Trio, who assault the Ellington cannon with an almost punk-like ferocity. But then Reynolds the pianist takes himself out of the mix and hands over to a string quartet, who plays his arrangements of Ellington classics that are interesting if not particularly compelling. Then he leaves the room entirely and allows various DJs to remix the earlier pieces with what might be called remixed results. Admirable rather than enjoyable, what Reynolds ends up proving is that Ellington's immense, incalculable legacy can survive even the most iconoclastic of attacks. grahamreynolds.com