Stephen Riley - Lover

Styles: Saxophone Jazz

Year: 2013

File: MP3@320K/s

Time: 64:59

Size: 149,5 MB

Art: Front

(8:28)  1. Nice Work If You Can Get It

(6:27)  2. Love Is a Many/Splendored Thing

(6:49)  3. When I Take My Sugar To Tea

(8:34)  4. When Your Lover Has Gone

(5:37)  5. When Lights Are Low

(8:57)  6. Deluge

(6:11)  7. Lover

(4:55)  8. After You, Who?

(8:56)  9. Evidence

Saxophonist Stephen Riley favored a sans-piano format on his first few albums as a leader all the better to showcase his lithe, striated tenor without the potential constrictions imposed by a chordal instrument. Since those early efforts, he’s teamed up with pianist Ernest Turner on a pair of occasions. The switch in strategy initially took some getting used to, but it also swiftly revealed Riley’s skill at excelling in virtually any small group setting. My preference still lies with his piano-less ventures, but I’ve definitely warmed to those where keys are a factor. Lover, Riley’s latest, employs the talents of label mate Peter Zak at the ivories. (Longtime bassist Neal Caine and drummer Jason Marsalis are also on hand.) Zak proves an even better fit with Riley’s sensibilities than Turner did. His preference for playing sparingly and succinctly leaves the players plenty of space to move and react. The musical chemistry between the pair is so potent that the session produced not one but two discs worth of material; the second will be released later.  As he has in past recordings for the Danish label Steeplechase, Riley retools antiquated standards with unconventional arrangements. The title tune forms a loose sort of thematic trilogy with two others, in which the presence of “Love” in the titles telegraphs a pervasive romantic bent.

Zak sits out during the opening of “Nice Work if You Can Get It” leaving Riley to weave beautifully with bass and drums. Caine’s strings have a reverberating snap that is accentuated by punctuating strums. Flirting with oblique iterations of the theme, Riley folds in a winking tag from Charlie Parker’s “Koko” before finally revealing the melody proper in full at the close. Zak leads for much of “Love Is a Many Splendored Things” setting up a solo prelude as a counterpart to Riley’s lush unaccompanied tenor cadenza. Suitably obscure in origin, “When I Take My Sugar Tea” is parsed with playful pauses and tempo shifts. Caine and Marsalis earn their hazard pay by keeping pace with Riley’s hairpin turns and caroming asides. An aggressive drum solo disperses into light-touch Tin Pan Alley syncopations and sets up the unabashed beauty on display for “When Your Lover Has Gone.”

Riley and Zak take “When Lights Are Low” together without support. It’s a five-and-a-half minute exercise in tempering comeliness with close colloquy. Wayne Shorter’s “Deluge” and Monk’s “Evidence” drag the songbook forward a few decades, and the quartet gives both the collective workout each deserves. Each piece exposes Riley’s kinship with the specific moods of the composer. The former builds from a subdued melancholic open and caps with a pithy Coltrane quote. The latter develops through a string of duo exchanges where Riley flirts with the angular Monkian melody before going silent for much of the second half and  leaving his rhythm section to their own devices. My abiding admiration (some might argue bias) for Riley’s work is no secret to those who have read coverage here at Dusted over the years. His unconventional use of ultra-hard reed to essay a satin soft sound a common sense contradiction sets him apart from every other under-40 player I can think of. This date brings his track record as a leader to seven for seven and, for reasons I’m still discovering and savoring, it comes highly recommended. ~ Derek Taylor http://dustedmagazine.tumblr.com/post/72564002367/stephen-riley-lover-steeplechase

Personnel: Stephen Riley (tenor saxophone), Peter Zak (piano), Neal Caine (bass), Jason Marsalis (drums)

Lover

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