Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Organik Vibe Trio: Moscow

225

Organik Vibe Trio: Moscow

Organik Vibe Trio: Moscow
The members of the Organik Vibe Trio bring highly diverse playing and recording experience—and writing talents—to Moscow. With a broad collective résumé, this empathic team drives hard—and quite beautifully—over ten highly inspired, enjoyable and swinging selections, with five standards and five originals.

Al Dubin/Harry Warren's "Summer Night" kicks off the session, with vibraphonist/marimbaist Dave Samuels' mallets playing the up-tempo samba melody. Organist/accordionist Ron Oswanki's B-3 is always right there, comping and offering ideas across the date. The melodic and harmonic synergy between these two players is a joy to observe throughout, and with drummer Marko Marcinko's unleashing drive, the three players fit together with classic precision.

The instrumentation, with Oswanski handling the bass line duties, works extremely well, with no instrument overshadows the others. There's a nice mellowness to this CD, but it certainly swings hard, as on Samuels' "Sherwood," where Marcinko's toms and rim shots perk things along, as Oswanski's B-3 shouts out.

The frenetic pace and schizoid melodic lines of "Knots" set off a chase led by Samuels and Oswanski, who run their lines perfectly. The vibraphonist's four-mallet chords are in perfect keeping with the piece's tone, and Marcinko's "tonal tom" solo fits with the mania.

"Strange Music" is everything but—a classic organ feature, where Oswanski soars and Samuels swings. The obligatory bossa, "Zingaro," is a pretty, less frequently heard Antonio Carlos Jobim song that is covered tastefully, with supreme restraint and mood, while the beautiful "Stepping Stone" shows meditative colors over a three-toned repetitive melodic fragment, with Samuels' light raindrop touch a gem.

Billy Strayhorn's "Lotus Blossom" finds Oswanski's accordion doubling Samuels' tremeloed lead with a bit of exotic flair. Oswanski steers clear of "Lady of Spain" pyrotechnics, in favor of tasteful comps and fancy-free runs. Cole Porter's swinging "So in Love" ends the session with a fierce straight-ahead burn from all three players.

There are many subtleties throughout this recording, with nothing ever blatant or repetitively boring. There are some very obvious characteristics: it swings, engages, and offers nothing more than exquisite tastefulness. Moscow is a highly entertaining and imaginative offering by a stellar group that makes the most—and delivers the best—of its apparently awesome talents.

Track Listing

Summer Night; Moscow; Sherwood; Knots; Strange Music; Zingaro; Sleeping Beauty; Stepping Stone; Lotus Blossom; So in Love.

Personnel

Dave Samuels: vibes, marimba; Ron Oswanski: organ, accordian; Marko Marcinko: drums, percussion.

Album information

Title: Moscow | Year Released: 2011 | Record Label: Self Produced

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.