Jim Chappell
Tender Ritual

The debut of American Jim Chappell, dated 1986, could simply be defined as a New Age music album. But this label, like any label, can mean everything and nothing.

It could be defined as chamber music, understood not as a genre but as a definition. It is the kind of music worth listening to in your own room, letting it flow in the background without giving it much thought in a light state of surrender.

Jim Chappell, through his piano, with a decidedly non-virtuosic approach, manages in ten tracks to offer a true exhibition of melodic watercolors of rare beauty and simplicity, able to go straight to the heart without much fuss at the risk of dangerously leaning toward sentimentality and pathos. Yet he never falls.

This is the undeniable quality of this "Tender Ritual." Extreme simplicity without falling into banality. Conventional melodic lines without sounding redundant. In this magical balancing act (daring in its own way), lies the strength of the 10 tracks on this album. There's nothing else to support it.

Chappell is like those street artists who create soap bubbles. Those bubbles are so fragile that you're afraid they'll burst and vanish at any moment, yet the artist's skill allows him to shape them, stretch them, even throw and catch them always intact.

You feel a similar sensation listening to "Tender Ritual": the substance is delicate, so delicate it seems as if it's about to burst, disappear at any moment.

"Blue Racer", "Magic Sleigh Ride", "Sea Feeling", "Free Again", "Hangin' Out" are wonderful, iridescent soap bubbles, which Chappell skillfully manipulates from beginning to end, preserving the magic of his small compositions intact.

Well done, Jim Chappell. Such a debut is worth a career; one that you then had, long and satisfying, without ever repeating the miracle of this first happy album.