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Rating:
A Stanley Clarke album? No way! And I thought he had gotten lost in the labyrinths of a fusion increasingly impoverished and grotesque parody of itself...
What can we do, ever since that dreadful album "School Days," I've always had a soft spot for good old Uncle Stanley and his torrential hyper-bass ejaculations. The fact is, he's from the old school. It's true that he revolutionized (along with others) the technique of the electric bass, but Mr. Clarke was born a double bassist, and when his hefty hands fly over the four strings of the acoustic instrument, you just have to be silent and listen... As you can see here.
Rather, I was quite puzzled by the presence of pianist and keyboardist Hiromi Uehara in the credits, the Japanese girl everyone is now talking about... No offense to Hiromi's fans, but her albums seem like pearls of bad taste to me... I mean, it's all played with top-notch performance, the super-virtuoso musicians constantly challenge each other on the hardest scales and the fastest passages, but it's all been heard before, nowadays on YouTube there are twelve-year-olds playing four guitars at once, or esoteric twenty-eight string basses... Today's music is going in a completely different direction, it's freer and less explicit.
That said, the album offers quite a few reasons for interest: the gamble of bringing together musicians so heterogeneous from each other in terms of training, culture... And even height! To make one Clarke, you need two Hiromis stacked on top of each other... Moreover, as far as I know, this is the first album of the bassist in which features exclusively the classic acoustic jazz trio: piano, double bass, drums. Well, as much as I am the first not to believe it, I have to admit that with "Jazz in the Garden," we are facing an acoustic jazz trio with all the right credentials, with well-crafted compositions and improvisations, where each of the three musicians involved voluntarily puts a mute on their overflowing talent, avoiding bravado... But not giving up on fun and enjoyment.
Almost shocking is Hiromi's transformation. We last saw her having hysterics on toy keyboards, and now we find her as a refined manipulator of black-and-white keys. To realize this, just listen to the delightful improvised duet "Global Tweak." The Japanese knows jazz and plays with taste - a guiding figure: Chick Corea, I'd say. Who knows, maybe this album has given her the idea to abandon those messy fusion jazz and Japanese pop concoctions she produces under her name.
As expected, the three play the game on the front of eclecticism, daring to juxtapose intriguing original compositions ("Paradigm Shift", "Sicilian Blues"), indestructible standards ("Take the Coltrane", "Someday My Prince Will Come", "Solar"), reinterpretations of Japanese traditional songs, managing even to pull out the swing from a song like "Under the Bridge" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. An original, imaginative, and enjoyable program.
In conclusion, this trio has convinced me. And I'm curious to hear them play live, since they'll be touring Italy this summer...
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