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CD Pick of the Week... Mort Weiss Quartet
The Weiss-DeFrancesco combination is a natural. Both men are highly caloric musical personalities. Both are eclectics to the best sense - at home with all the accents of the jazz language. The result is mutual inspiration, and when the backfield is as potent and compatible a team as Ron Eschete’ and Ramon Banda, sparks are bound to fly.
One distinguishing mark of a first-rate group is its ability to embrace a wide range of musical styles while maintaining an individual sound. A sound created by four highly versatile and craftsmanlike musicians with a high degree of imagination.
Conceivably, this collection of nine tunes could provide ammunition for those who might claim Weiss and DeFrancesco are not saying anything new. Not so. Each has maintained supremacy on their instrument. What makes this album especially interesting is that it provides a comparison of two different approaches to jazz. At the same time, make no mistake, responses to each other are immediate and sensitive. Some of the tunes are There Will Never Be Another You, For All We Know and Al Jolson’s Avalon.
As I once said in my liner notes for an album by Wild Bill Davis, the organ has been associated too long with just the church, and Davis has moved it outside of the gates. DeFrancesco has taken it to the courtyard. As for the clarinet of Weiss, Artie Shaw once told me that the clarinet must produce a distinctive timbre and tone-color in performance, and Weiss meets the challenge.
Johnny Adams
Monterey County Post
July 10, 2003
Rating:  [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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