COMPOSERS: Aaron Parks,Ben Street,Billy Hart
LABELS: ECM
ALBUM TITLE: Aaron Parks * Ben Street * Billy Hart
WORKS: Find the Way
PERFORMER: Aaron Parks (piano), Ben Street (double bass), Billy Hart (drums)
CATALOGUE NO: 478 1841
Pianist Aaron Parks has a mellifluous, expansive style and all except one of the pieces presented here are his; bassist Street mostly operates as a supportive extension of the pianist’s left hand, for which the music is none the worse. Hart has a wealth of varied experience running from soul to fusion, but he also carries with him the stadium jazz legacy inherited from some of his former bandleaders such as Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock.
Somewhat unexpectedly – and his pre-existing partnership with Street notwithstanding – he routinely deploys this in what might otherwise have been a pro-forma chamber-jazz setting, reduced in scale but still very much identifiable in its forthright approach, typified by the rolling, melodic fills he plays on the opening track. While this occasionally sounds slightly lumpen within the traditional ECM soundscape, the album as a whole is more than the sum of its parts in an odd but interesting way.
Roger Thomas