Chris Crocco: The Chris Crocco Fluid Trio (2007)

Glenn Astarita

Senior Contributor since 1997

Longtime contributor to AAJ and Downbeat, Jazz Review, EjazzNews, Radio DirectX.

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Published: April 24, 2007

Chris Crocco: The Chris Crocco Fluid Trio

Berklee College of Music grad and formidable guitarist Chris Crocco spends much of his time in the New York City area as a performer and educator. With his debut release, Crocco and his trio judiciously parallel the inference of the album title. Featuring sax giant George Garzone and drummer Francisco Mela, the music iterated here bridges finesse with power. Moreover, dynamics are poignantly distributed throughout these buoyantly executed pieces, while Crocco mans the lower register to occasionally compensate for the bass-less format. Here, the guitarist and Garzone interweave soloing maneuvers as they render contrapuntal phrasings while trading fours atop semi-structured themes.

Crocco frames a good portion of this set on an open-air platform, where the trio delves into latter-day Trane-isms amid movements where they engage in punchy unison choruses. In other regions of sound, the guitarist lays down a slow-tempo surf-rock type motif, whereas his dark-toned licks on "Swag intimates sublime balladry.

On the Wizard of Oz-culled "If I Only Had A Brain, Crocco's anthem-like reading is offset by Mela's asymmetrically engineered, rumbling and tumbling pulses. In sum, the trio affords itself ample stretching room to coincide with an uncanny semblance of flexibility, brute force and progressive-jazz like expansion.

Track Listing: Piece of Mind; Meta-Ethics; Swag; October Wind; To Silvia (Don�t Say Goodbye); Foreign Affairs; If I Only Had A Brain; Send Rain.

Personnel: Christopher Crocco: guitar; George Garzone: saxophone; Francisco Mela: drums.

Record Label: Chris Crocco Music
Style: Modern Jazz