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Leslie Pintchik: Quartets
by Christopher Shoe
Leslie Pintchik is a newer face on the jazz scene and Quartets is a respectable contribution that keeps in tide with her growing reputation. Pintchik's approach to jazz does not rely on flashy lines or complex chordal movement like many of her peers; instead, it focuses on strong improvised material backed by a solid group of musicians who both complement her and add their own voice when the time comes for them to solo. Quartets is no ...
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by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Leslie Pintchik, an adept interpreter of American Songbook classics and a composer of beautifully melodic tunes, emerged on the jazz scene in 2004 with the trio set So Glad to Be Here (Ambient Records). AAJer John Kelman, in his review of the disc, wrote of her inhabiting a “dangerously occupied middle ground, [with] a trick up her sleeve...Satoshi Takeishi."On Quartets Pintchik pulls Takeishi out of that sleeve again on five of the nine tracks, along with drummer ...
Continue ReadingLeslie Pintchik: So Glad To Be Here
by Elliott Simon
Pianist Leslie Pintchik and her bassist/husband, Scott Hardy, have invited percussionist Satoshi Takeishi into their cozy fold for a distinctive staging of the traditional jazz piano trio. The recipe succeeds, surprisingly well at times, as Takeishi adds his singular voice to Pintchik's melodic playing on So Glad to Be Here. Although the Kern/Hammerstein opener, “All the Things You Are," begins innocently enough, almost immediately Takeishi's expressively delicate percussive pots and pans captivate. Against Hardy's firm foundation, Pintchik has ...
Continue ReadingLeslie Pintchik: So Glad To Be Here
by Michael P. Gladstone
As album debuts go, So Glad To Be Here is a noteworthy one for pianist Leslie Pintchik and her trio. The album begins with two standards and ends with Monk's “We See." Everything else is a Pintchik original, with one composition from bassist Scott Hardy.The pianist was a graduate student at Columbia University pursuing a career in teaching English Literature when she decided to change directions. In the mid 1980s, she was selected by West Coast bassist Red ...
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by Virginia A. Schaefer
Pianist and composer Leslie Pintchik has played clubs in New York for several years, and it shows in the natural approach that predominates on this her first release. She gives plenty of space to skillful bassist Scott Hardy, who's also her husband, and to drummer Satoshi Takeishi, whose style is imaginative yet unobtrusive. The three players demonstrate their easy rapport on the opening standard “All the Things You Are," taken in a comfortable samba-like groove. Supporting Pintchik's supple line is ...
Continue ReadingLeslie Pintchik: So Glad to Be Here
by Dan McClenaghan
It's happened to a lot of us, getting hit really hard by the music of Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. Most of us, though, don't--after taking the hit--give up the beginnings of a promising career in academia to pursue jazz full bore; but that's what pianist Leslie Pintchik did, and So Glad to Be Here is the result--and a superb one--of that career change.Pintchik put together her first trio in '92, but So Glad to Be Here is ...
Continue ReadingLeslie Pintchik: So Glad to Be Here
by John Kelman
Joining the ranks of the heavily-populated piano trio format is a risky proposition, especially within the mainstream because there are, quite simply, so many players out there mining the same space that unless one has something new to say or a radically new approach, one runs the very real risk of becoming just another one of many. And while So Glad to Be Here certainly positions pianist Leslie Pintchik in that dangerously occupied middle ground, she does have one trick ...
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