Bob Schlesinger at Dazzle

Bob Schlesinger
Dazzle
Denver, CO
August 14, 2025

For decades, renowned recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder captured one classic jazz album after another in his Englewood Cliffs, NJ studio. Perhaps because he did so many, he was extremely efficient. He was able to get an album on tape in a single day, sometimes in as little as three hours. Other recording artists have been known to take a bit longer. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (Capitol Records, 1973), for example, required about eight months of recording and production.

Colorado pianist/composer Bob Schlesinger took the latter approach with his newly released Falling From Earth (Bob Schlesinger, 2025). Work on the project began in 2018. Astute readers will note that there was the little matter of COVID-19 in the interim. But besides that, Schlesinger and producer John March spent considerable time reworking the original recordings, much like Teo Macero's and Miles Davis's post-recording work on Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970).

All of which illustrates that the time lag between playing the notes and releasing them into the wild has little to do with musical quality. Falling From Earth is a richly rewarding album featuring guitarist Mike Stern, bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Billy Drummond, among others. Thursday night, Denver's Dazzle Jazz Club nightclub hosted the sold-out album release party for Falling From Earth. Stern, Gomez and Drummond were unable to attend the party, but drummer Mark Raynes and bassist Mike Brown stepped in and delivered with authority.

Schlesinger opened the evening alone at the acoustic piano with the rhythm section joining partway through the first piece, a medley of "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free" and Thad Jones' "A Child Is Born," which appears on Falling From Earth. Roughly half of the program was drawn from that album. The opening medley revealed Schlesinger's gift for crafting soaring, accessible melodies drenched in harmonic complexity, at times evoking the spirit of the Pat Metheny Group.

The second tune "On The Rocks" does not appear on Falling From Earth, but set the stage for much of the rest of the evening. Inspired by Thelonious Monk's "Straight, No Chaser," the tune bristled with dissonant chords and delightful quirks. Those qualities ran through many succeeding songs, such as the aptly-named original entitled "Left Field." While Schlesinger had both a grand piano and an electric piano at his disposal, he gravitated toward the acoustic, spending the bulk of his time on that instrument.

Another cover was Bob Dylan's "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)." This proved, once again, that, in the right hands, satisfying jazz can be created from just about any source material. Falling From Earth includes the Mike Stern composition "Suspone," a tune that had previously been covered by Michael Brecker, but which Stern himself had never recorded until the Falling From Earth sessions. Schlesinger explained that this tune is a contrafact, which means that it is a song built on the chord progression of another song but with a new melody. In this case, the chord progression came from George Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm," one of the most contrafacted songs in the jazz canon.

Schlesinger proved to be an amiable, chatty host, explaining how, at age 68, and after 50 or so years in the music business, he was releasing his first album as a leader. He explained that he spent a lot of time as a sideman as well as a fair bit as a co-leader of several bands. He is calling his current concerts the "Always a Bridesmaid Tour."

For the finale, Schlesinger brought his friend, Denver-based vocalist Robert Johnson, onto the stage for three songs. Johnson displayed a resonant tenor that sometimes swooped to lower ranges in a seemingly effortless delivery, both fluid and expressive. They began with the poignant "Before This Night Is Through," a tune Schlesinger and Johnson co-wrote. Next, Johnson and Schlesinger's trio covered "All Blues." The double entendre-filled "Body and Fender Man" closed the show on a spicy, humorous note.

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