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Laszlo Gardony: Natural Instinct
ByGardony lies somewhere between the pianists (Monk, Andrew Hill) who seem to struggle against the instrument and those (Cole, Jarrett) whose musical ideas seem to flow unimpeded through the instrument. Like the latter group, Gardony's virtuosity is often unobtrusive, because his skill makes it sound easy; but like the latter group, he is capable of flights of arpeggiated fancy that seem to test the response time of the little-felt hammers inside the piano. Part of the enjoyment of listening to jazz piano has always been listening to the struggle of the first group, but another part is marvelling at the easy mastery of the second. On Natural Instinct, Gardony forges a middle path, combining the best of both schools.
The record's strong suit is surely the music's rhythmic complexity: the tension between the melodic line and drummer Yoron Israel's rhythm on the title track and "Waking Dreams" (a composition which channels the spirit of Herbie Nichols, another "middle path" pianist); or Gardony's soloing over the gentle bossa nova pulse underlying "Thinking of Stella" and "Someone.
Then again, another strength is the uniformly high quality of the compositions, a combination of pieces by Gardony and genuinely novel renditions of "Motherless Child" and Horace Silver's "Peace." And the record's triumph may be the pianist's harmonic complexityhe re-chords a passage of "Softly (As in a Morning Sunrise)" with just the same understated melancholy you might expect from Bill Evans.
If Natural Instinct is immediately appealing, it also continues to reveal its subtleties over time.
Track Listing
Natural Instinct; Revolution; Hidden Message; Motherless Child; Me and My Echo; Waking Dreams; Thinking of Stella; Peace; Softly (As in a Morning Sunrise); Someone; Us and the Night and the Music.
Personnel
Laszlo Gardony
pianoLaszlo Gardony: piano; John Lockwood: bass; Yoron Israel: drums.
Album information
Title: Natural Instinct | Year Released: 2006 | Record Label: Sunnyside Records
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