A piano trio disc (with Drew Gress on bass, Bill Stewart on drums) seems to come out every minute on this planet, but few of them have the depth and sensitivity of this release. From its miniature opening statement of Johnny Mandel's "Emily," a tune that recurs like a leitmotif, to the closing moments of "I Fall in Love too Easily," there is nearly one hour of introspective, meaningful music.
Whether you spin it at the midnight hour or not, Night Whispers breathes like the soft winds and promise of a spring evening. The titles reflect the thinking that animates the music, with evocative appellations like "The Bell Tolls," and "Night Whispers," the last an oxymoronic piece that is one of the most pressing and insistent on the disc, with a looping vamp that allows Bill Stewart to stretch out a compelling rhythm. The shifting, freely interspersed chord punctuations on "So What" make it one of the most original takes on the Miles Davis standard that I've ever heard. The subsequent interpretation, starting, logically enough, with a bass solo, while the drums "walk," is evidence of the creative play these musicians are capable of, thinking outside the box, even with seemingly restrictive vehicles that they have chosen as springboards for improvisations, but not without having carefully worked out some interesting arrangements.
While this might come across as a "ballads album," it is not quite such, since only bassist Drew Gress' "Like it Never Was," breathes with the flimsy stuff that dreams are made on, in a filigreed melody that Copland tosses from his piano like so much stardust while the drums whisper and the bass throbs, making this the most tender moment.
Most of the rest of the music is poised on a fulcrum that balances intensity and relaxation, as in the driven "Space Acres" or the persistent "Scattered Leaves." The most romantic moment — a kind of summation of the swirling emotions that are stirred up (by someone named Emily, perhaps?) — comes in a rather swaggering "I Fall in Love too Easily," a tune crooners tend to milk for its pathos, but here it is rather like a happy admission of something that might not quite be the weakness it seems.
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Paul Serralheiro 2009-06-22
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