Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Alex Harding - Lucian Ban: Dark Blue

56

Alex Harding - Lucian Ban: Dark Blue

Alex Harding - Lucian Ban: Dark Blue
Lucian Ban (piano) and Alex Harding (woodwinds) have performed and recorded together for 20-years besides their prominent activities within global progressive jazz and improvisational circles. The universal language of jazz is conveyed here as Detroit-reared Harding and the Romanian born pianist gel to a variety of tempos amid solstice, reflective sentiment, off-centered blues balladry and bouncy grooves. Toss in some lyrically resplendent tapestries of sound and a crystalline audio production, you are liable to become entranced by the duo's moody vibes that are etched within an underlying sense of glee.

The musicians occasionally engage in some friendly fire but Harding's deep bass clarinet work on "Black Sea" is comped by Ban's lower register contrasts and loosely articulated Latin phrasings along with his playful picking of the piano strings that offer Harding some improvisational rhythmic support. Other works feature soul-stirring dialogues with Ban's up-tempo ostinato vamps and ascending block chords, adding a bit of tension and dynamic buildups on "Not That Kind Of Blues," countered by Harding's edgy wails and a catchy hook. Here, the duo rips through concise unison statements and ballsy exhortations as they build intensity and execute some reverse-engineering metrics along the way.

It's easy to detect that the duo has been collaborating all these years. At times they seem clairvoyant while interacting and reinventing, without rushing the game-plan by veering off into abstruse angles or rummaging through extended soloing blowouts. Essentially, there are many magical moments throughout this pleasurable and incisive set.

Track Listing

Dark Blue; Tough Love; Chakra; Black Sea; Monkey See; Not That Kind of Blues; Esto; H.B; Lowcountry Blue; The Invisible Man; Hymn.

Personnel

Alex Harding
saxophone, baritone

Alex Harding: bass clarinet.

Album information

Title: Dark Blue | Year Released: 2019 | Record Label: Sunnyside Records

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.