Robert Glasper: Mood

The pianist's lighthearted melody "Tipsy" reveals an affection for the music of Kenny Kirkland but more importantly exhibits an excellent compositional gift and an extraordinary stylistic range as he moves from articulate straight-ahead swinging to fluid parallel octave playing to a very personal sort of spacey staccato stride. He segues seamlessly into a rendition of "Alone Together" that begins with a confident reading of the melody and then proceeds to dissect it into fragments yielding material for experimentation.

The title track is another notable original on which the pianist/composer utilizes the voicing of Mike Moreno's guitar and John Ellis' tenor saxophone to create a quiet intensity. Glasper wrote the words and music to "Don't Close Your Eyes," a plaintive plea featuring Bilal's raspy falsetto that unveils a real talent for popular songwriting. Ironically, perhaps the best example of the high level of his creativity comes not from one of his fine originals, but on his arrangement of the Irving Berlin evergreen "Blue Skies," where he makes the old standard completely his own.

Even the 2:15 hip-hop "Interlude" that follows demonstrates a remarkable melodic gift. His "In Passing" is a surprisingly upbeat lament that reveals a virtuoso approach indebted to Keith Jarrett while expressing an optimistic outlook that is an unmistakable aspect of his own music. The concluding "L.N.K. Blues" is a blowing session augmenting the trio with the battling tenor saxophones of Ellis and Marcus Strickland, on which the pianist shows off his hard bop chops, illustrating emphatically he can do it all.