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Jazz Articles about Richard Pellegrin

About Richard Pellegrin

Album Review

Passage is an improvised piano album by Rich Pellegrin, a continuation of his solo album Solitude (OA2, 2021). Both Solitude and Passage were recorded during the same sessions in summer 2019 at Langley Methodist Church (Langley, WA). After multiple releases from Pellegrin's quintet, these two solo albums stand out as an intimate and vulnerable exploration of self. The artist paints it as “a narrow route through a difficult terrain." Passage invites listeners on a journey of passing life, death, and ...

Album Review

Rich Pellegrin: Passage

Read "Passage" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
April 7, 2022

In the summer of 2019, pianist Rich Pellegrin retreated to Whidbey Island, Washington, near Seattle. On the island, in the fellowship hall of the Langley United Methodist Church, lies an Everett Concert Grand Piano, from 1915. It is an aging and perhaps imperfect instrument, but one with a certain character which compelled Pellegrin to set up a recording situation and lay down some of his most intimate, inward music. The piano, the crisp air, the cold blue Pacific Ocean, the ...

Album Review

Rich Pellegrin: Solitude

Read "Solitude" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
April 12, 2021

Pianist Rich Pellegrin teaches at the University of Florida, in Gainesville. But, when he is not teaching, he flies diagonally across the country to land in Seattle. Then he catches a ferry to Whidbey Island--his retreat from the daily hubbub of making a living. His CD release Solitude was recorded there, at the Langley Methodist Church, on an Everett Concert Grand Piano dating from 1915--not an instrument possessed of a perfection of response or precision of articulation, but one with ...

Album Review

Richard Pellegrin: Down

by Dan McClenaghan
February 6, 2019

In an All About Jazz review of pianist/bandleader Rich Pellegrin's Episodes IV-V (OA2 Records, 2015), the author states that Pellegrin's style lies “somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between jazz and 21st century classical music." That also holds true with Down, the third quintet offering from the Assistant Professor at Florida State University. And if the music leans in the direction of jazz, it's of the accessible avant-garde variety. Down features seven tracks from Pellegrin's ...

Album Review

Rich Pellegrin Quintet: Episodes IV-VI

Read "Episodes IV-VI" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
January 14, 2015

Pianist Rich Pellegrin offered up his first installment of Three Part Odyssey (OA2 Records) in 2011. It's a musical journey inspired by travels through Europe and North Africa. Employing a superb quintet, three “Episodes" blossomed from a first rate collective approach. Pellegrin and his group follow this up with Episodes IV-VI, featuring a slightly more reflective mode, added to the same originality, top level musicianship and crafty, compelling compositions. The music--all by from Pellegrin's pen--eschews, for the most ...

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Album Review

Rich Pellegrin Quintet: Three-Part Odyssey

Read "Three-Part Odyssey" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
August 11, 2011

What a strange, compelling, often circuitous trip Three-Part Odyssey is. Pianist/composer/bandleader Rich Pellegrin has collected a youthful quintet of Seattle's boldest and most energetic musicians for his debut CD--73 minutes of audacious grooves inside a set of freewheeling compositions that showcase each band member's individual virtuosic prowess without abandoning the collective mood.Along with the leader, three of the quintet's members contribute to the songwriting, starting off with trumpeter R. Scott Morning's labyrinthine “Part 1: Nothing Comes To Mind," ...