Denny Zeitlin: Odyssey

Pianist Denny Zeitlin takes a trip into his archival book on the first half of Odyssey. He has always mixed eloquence and beauty with adventurousness. That is up front here. A close comparison to his style of playing can be found in the artistry of Bill Evans. And it should be noted that Evans adopted one of Zeitlin's most touching, gorgeously placid compositions, "Quiet Now," into his concert and recording songbook.

Odyssey is not a deep archival dive—Zeitlin has been active as a recording artist since his sideman slot on flutist Jeremy Steig's Flute Fever (Columbia, 1964). The music he presents on Odyssey comes from his new millennium work. The first two tunes, "It Could Happen to You" and "Body and Soul," are taken from a 2003 show at the Palace of the Fine Arts Theatre in San Francisco—a trio effort with Mel Graves on bass and George Marsh on drums. Zeitlin's near-unparalleled pianistic grace, his suppleness of touch and his willingness to reinvent and reharmonise are here. The pianist can brood with the best of them—his 2012 set, Wherever You Are (Sunnyside), puts this aspect of his artistry on full display—but, on these two standards, he sounds celebratory and bold.

The next three Cole Porter tunes are served up via solo piano, recorded in 2020 and 2025. "Night And Day" asserts itself as a slow rhumba; "It Was Just One Of Those Things" is exploratory, with shifting tempos and percussive keyboard work.

The second half of the CD, tunes 6 through 12, features Zeitlin transitioning to an electro-acoustic style, accompanied once again by drummer Marsh. There is no mystery to Zeitlin operating in this territory. He jumped in, with both feet, to write an electro-acoustic orchestral soundtrack to the 1978 remake of the 1956 science fiction movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And though he never revisited the soundtrack mode—the effort was probably too demanding for a man with multiple simultaneous career paths in progress (psychiatrist, college professor, jazz pianist), the electro-bug had bitten him. His both/and was a 2013 solo effort in that mode; in 2014 he teamed with Marsh on Riding the Moment, and again, with Marsh, he released Telepathy—Duo Electro Acoustic Improvisation, all of these on Sunnyside Records. Zeitlin is more than adept at this. The tunes ebb and flow from the electric to the acoustic, with Zeitlin playing all manner of plugged-in instruments—keyboards and synthesizers—and switching, when the mood strikes, to acoustic piano. These are in-the-moment creations (they do get tweaks afterwards; Zeitlin is gifted at adding electric string backdrops). The tunes are compelling, sometimes space-aged, sometimes almost pastoral—pastoral soundscapes of alien planets, some of which are similar to Earth.

Odyssey plays out, as in the beginning, as a traditional but highly adventurous album that closes out as an intrepid and successful exploration of electric sounds.