Angels Around (Heartcore Records)
Kurt Rosenwinkel
Released May 8, 2020
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2020
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About:
Guitarist, composer, multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, and Heartcore Records founder Kurt Rosenwinkel has long been known as a singular creative voice at the forefront of modern music. His imaginative integration of electronics, rich idiosyncratic harmonic colors, genre-bending aesthetics and his masterful collection of original compositions has inspired generations of musicians and listeners and has left an indelible mark on the 21st century sonic landscape.
Following on the success of 2009’s “Kurt Rosenwinkel Standards Trio – Reflections”, the new album cements Kurt Rosenwinkel’s standing as a living jazz master; a torch bearer for the art form at its purest and most honest level. “Kurt Rosenwinkel Trio – Angels Around” is steeped in the vast musical knowledge Rosenwinkel developed playing alongside such legendary jazz innovators as Joe Henderson, Paul Motian, and Gary Burton. Appropriately, the album is a dive into the deep end of the ever evolving standard jazz canon.
Italian bassist Dario Deidda has long been known as one of the finest players on the European scene and has been featured on over 60 recordings as a sideman in addition to his two records as a bandleader. What sets Deidda apart is his entirely unique bass sound and approach. Combining influences from traditions in jazz bass both acoustic and electric, traditional and modern, Deidda is the perfect bass counterpart to Rosenwinkel’s expansive approach on the guitar. On “Angels Around”, he opts for semi-acoustic bass, and manipulates it so as to produce a sound with the transparency of the standard upright, but the edge and sonic presence of an electric instrument.
Percussionist Gregory “Hutch” Hutchinson has established himself as one of the foremost drum virtuosi of his generation. A musicians drummer soundly rooted in the jazz tradition, Hutch is able to approach all styles of music with supreme accuracy and imagination, decorating compositions with his natural feel and mind blowing innovation. His relationship with Kurt Rosenwinkel extends back to the New York jazz scene of the 1990’s, a fruitful and boundlessly creative time for many of today’s top players, and a period of great invention for jazz music as a whole.
Kurt Rosenwinkel Trio – Angels Around traverses new musical frontiers in the standard jazz idiom. While Rosenwinkel, Hutchinson, and Deidda embody and emote the rich traditions of jazz at its purest form, make no mistake, this music is thoroughly contemporary, focused, and for the here and now.
Track Listing:
1. Ugly Beauty (Thelonious Monk) 06:31
2. Ease It (Paul Chambers) 05:56
3. Self Portrait in Three Colors (Charles Mingus) 07:25
4. Simple No. 2 (Kurt Rosenwinkel) 09:49
5. Punjab (Joe Henderson) 06:39
6. Time Remembered (Bill Evans) 06:45
7. Angels Around (Dario Deidda) 06:00
Personnel:
Kurt Rosenwinkel: guitar
Dario Deidda: bass guitar
Greg Hutchinson: drums
Produced by Kurt Rosenwinkel
Recorded and Mixed at Heartcore Studios, by Kurt Rosenwinkel and Philipp Bernhardt
Mastered by Glenn Schick Mastering
Production Coordinator: Michaela Bóková
Artwork by Riccardo Vecchio Imprints
Review:
For his second release on his own Heartcore Records, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel offers an intimate, yet deeply expansive instrumental trio album. Angels Around is a nice contrast to 2017’s Brazilian-influenced Caipi, which found Rosenwinkel both singing and playing many of his own original pieces. Here, he delves into a more straightforward, if no less exploratory jazz standards setting, tackling a handful of lesser-played compositions with some originals sprinkled in. Joining him are Italian bassist Dario Deidda and drummer Gregory Hutchinson. Both Deidda and Hutchinson bring a wealth of experience to the session. Deidda has played with such Italian luminaries as singer Fiorella Mannoia and trumpeter Enrico Rava, and his warm, robust sound brings to mind contemporaries like Christian McBride and veterans like Dave Holland. Similarly, Hutchinson has been a first-call player for decades, and his roiling, textured style is the perfect foil for Rosenwinkel’s sparkling, far-eyed improvisational lines. Together, they play a harmonically textured post-bop that evokes the electrified ’70s jazz of guitarist Pat Martino. Rosenwinkel’s guitar, steeped in neon-toned effects, has a golden, diamond-tipped aura that still shimmers with an organic, vocal-like essence. He reworks Thelonious Monk’s “Ugly Beauty” into a fluid, afterglow number made buoyant by Deidda and Hutchinson’s groovy, Latin-fusion underpinnings. Yet more straightahead is the trio’s upbeat reading of Paul Chambers’ architectural blues “Ease It.” Particularly ear-grabbing is the trio’s effusive take on Joe Henderson’s “Punjab,” its far-eyed modal angularity pushed ever skyward by Rosenwinkel’s searing improvisational lines. Elsewhere, they sink with doomy resonance into Charles Mingus’ slow ballad “Self Portrait in Three Colors,” and dive with red-eyed focus into the funky, Larry Coryell-esque original “Simple #2.” Rosenwinkel got his start in the ’90s playing with older veterans like Paul Motian, the aforementioned Henderson, and Gary Burton. Angels Around feels like an album any one of those players might have recorded in their prime, and one which speaks to Rosenwinkel’s ever-maturing sound.
Matt Collar (AllMusic)
