Back to basics
Rob Barron’s sublime pianism forms the foundation of an exceptional standards album
Rob Barron
From This Moment On
Rob Barron (piano); Jeremy Brown (bass); Josh Morrison (drums)
Ubuntu UBU0064)
The repertoire of most young/youngish jazz musicians these days consists almost exclusively of their own original compositions. This is entirely commendable, but I sometimes feel nostalgic for the days when certain well-established tunes and chord-sequences were a kind of lingua franca. This treasury of tunes was quarried by almost everybody and you could readily compare performances of the same piece whilst enjoying spotting the origins of litigation-dodging palimpsests of ‘I Got Rhythm’, ‘Cherokee’ or ‘Indiana’.
Barron joyfully plunders some of the greatest, most enduring tunes in the jazz and popular songbooks, from Oliver Nelson’s ‘Butch and Butch’ to Victor Young’s ‘My Foolish Heart’, modestly throwing in a couple of his own exemplary compositions (‘Fortune Green’ and ‘Evidently’) along the way. He plays with incisiveness, sinewy strength and grace, making imaginative use of the melodies and chords, and is well matched with Brown and Morrison. His CV stretches from here to way over there as a sideman and session musician with big names in the jazz and classical fields as well as appearing on film soundtracks – and this is classic piano trio jazz at its best. ★★★★★