Home

Album review

Aaron Goldberg's star in modern jazz has constantly been on the rise, especially as an accompanist. With Home, he establishes a delicate balance between the softer side of modern mainstream music à la Bill Evans with the more advanced harmonic approach of Keith Jarrett, while occasionally adding some rock-'em sock-'em neo-bop to the proceedings. These are mainly trio sessions with bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Eric Harland, but on occasion tenor saxophonist Mark Turner joins in, though his voicings are merely icing on the cake. Recalling giants like Frank Emilio Flynn and Ernesto Lecuona, Goldberg beautifully renders the Pablo Milanés song "Canción por la Unidad Latino America" with full grace in a classical sense and adds stark mystery to the title track and an upbeat film noir mode to "The Rules." Many of these tracks are in waltz tempo and are pretty beyond simple chord structures, even dipping into serenity and for one ballad, placidity. But Goldberg can't help shredding Thelonious Monk's "I Mean You" in a frenetic fever pitch, zooming along in atypical neo-bop fashion with Turner during "Aze's Blues," and working the six beats in four technique through the Latin montuno take of Steve Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely." Goldberg arrived on the scene during the decade of the 2000s, but by 2010 was firmly established as one of the more musical modern jazz pianists, as heard throughout on this excellent disc.
© Michael G. Nastos /TiVo