Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Collier & Dean: Duets

209

Collier & Dean: Duets

By

View read count
Collier & Dean: Duets
Ringing right in the middle of Duets, the new release by mallet man (vibes and marimba player) Tom Collier and bassist Dan Dean, is the unlikely—for a jazz set—Jagger/Richards tune, "What A Shame." It's an instrumental here, of course, but on the Rolling Stones version, the lyric goes:


What a shame,
nothing seems to be going right...


It's a nice take on the tune, but the sentiment doesn't ring true for Collier and Dean. With this, as well as their last Origin Records release, Mallet Jazz, it sounds like just about everything is going right.

Mallet Jazz featured Collier and Dean teamed with William O. "Bill" Smith (Dave Brubeck), pianist Don Grusin, mallet man Emil Richards, and drummer John Bishop; and it was an upbeat and engaging success. For Duets they've pared down the sound to just the vibes and electric bass, a sound that proves, in their hands, rich and bright and glowingly confident. The sound bounces as the duo shines up songs by Larry Coryell ("Lines"), John Coltrane ("Giant Steps"), Miles Davis ("So What?"), Dave Holland ("Backwoods Song"), and Gerry Mulligan ("Five Brothers"), in additions to four originals.

Both Dean and Collier are educators—Collier has been director of Percussion Studies at the University of Washington since 1980—and both have impressive worked-with/recorded-with resumes as long as your arms. With this simple configuration, they've created a sound that is compellingly different—like the elastic push and pull of electric bass bumping and tugging at the vibraphone radiance—and everything seems to be going just right when they can find the time to record a sparklingly beautiful set of sounds like Duets.

Visit Tom Collier on the web at www.tomcolliervibes.com .

Track Listing

Lines, Five Brothers, Now & Then, Giant Steps, Countess Li, What a Shame, Backwoods Song, Pacifice Aire, Rockavibabe, So What?, Kill the Butler

Personnel

Tom Collier
vibraphone
Collier & Dean
vibraphone
Dan Dean
bass

Tom Collier, vibraphone; Dan Dean, electric bass

Album information

Title: Duets | Year Released: 2005 | Record Label: Origin

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.