[JPL] JOHN TAYLOR...“Angel of the Presence” ...(CamJazz/Sunnyside)...NYTimes 11/6/06

[r durfee]

JOHN TAYLOR
“Angel of the Presence” 
(CamJazz/Sunnyside)

The sprightly touch and sonorous harmonies favored by
the British pianist John Taylor will strike many jazz
listeners as deeply evocative of Bill Evans. This is
neither an accident nor a shortcoming, judging by
“Angel of the Presence,” a confident and quietly
potent album featuring Mr. Taylor in a trio with the
Swedish bassist Palle Danielsson and the British
drummer Martin France. 

It is only the third conventional trio recording of
Mr. Taylor’s career. (The last one, in 2003, featured
the bassist Marc Johnson, a member of Mr. Evans’s
final trio; before that you have to go back to 1972.)
What delivers it safely from the realm of emulation is
a non-standard repertory — four songs by Mr. Taylor,
and two apiece by his longtime associates Kenny
Wheeler and Steve Swallow — and a general tone that
could be described, inadequately though not
disparagingly, as vaguely European. 

Each member of the trio exerts equal pull, though the
attention naturally turns to Mr. Taylor’s articulate
pianism. At various points in Mr. Swallow’s “Up Too
Late,” Mr. Taylor improvises with hard tenacity,
tossing off silvery runs and two-handed arabesques. On
“Afterthought,” one of three originals set in waltz
time, he nudges his cohorts toward some open-ended
modalities; the results land far from the turf of Mr.
Evans, or anyone else. NATE CHINEN

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/arts/music/06choi.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=music

Roy Durfee
P.O. Box 40219
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87196-0219
rdurfee2003 at yahoo.com



 
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