Gordon Lee: How Can It Be?

For a couple of years the Covid virus did its damnedest to shut the music down, especially the experience of live shows. During that downtime, pianist, composer & bandleader Gordon Lee put his idled hands to work practicing and composing new music. At his wife's urging, he also began a series of front porch concerts, casual shows for his neighbors and anybody else who happened to wander by. These quartet sessions were the impetus for Lee's How Can It Be? To steal and embellish a line from that dinosaur movie: "Life and music find a way."

The music reflects the way Lee feels about the world as it is now. How can it be? Many rational people must feel the same way.

The title tune opens the show. Lee displays an ebullient splendor on the piano. Saxophonist Renato Caranto sounds raw and anguished. How the hell can it be? Bassist Dennis Calazza and drummer Gary Hobbs drive things hard. It plays out as a worried but hopeful sound.

"Hypatia" was an Egyptian scholar and astronomer murdered by religious fanatics in Alexandria. in 415. Unsettled times are not confined to the present. In spite of the darkness of the demise of a brilliant and educated man at the hands of the ignorant and deluded crowd, the tune has a whimsical feel, perhaps ironically so.

Speaking of the ignorant and deluded, "Bozo Sulks On the Golf Course" was written with a certain former President of the United States in mind. It is sharp-edged and antic, like the soundtrack for a speeded-up round of golf, the golfer-protagonist dancing, herky-jerky, Keystone Cop- like, over the green links in a red baseball cap and a too-tight white golf shirt, his furious frown bobbing across the screen like the face of a gargoyle goosed with a nine iron. A splendid piece of music.

"'Deed I Did It," a contrafact for "Deed I Do," is jaunty and fun, wrapping up a largely optimistic eye on the question How Can It Be?