Jeppe Zeeberg: Six Additional Pieces of Piano Music

Over the decade starting in 2014, the Danish pianist Jeppe Zeeberg showcased his talents in a variety of settings, from duos to large ensembles. His first album with a quartet, It's The Most Basic Thing You Can Do on A Boat (Barefoot Records, 2014), featured a mix of swing and daring creativity. Zeeberg's improvisational style is characterized by audacious invention. His debut solo album, Eight Seemingly Unrelated Pieces of Piano Music (Barefoot, 2018), revealed his diverse keyboard skills, incorporating organ, synthesizer and other electronics. Six Additional Pieces of Piano Music can be seen as a follow-up to that album, with its noteworthy distinctions.

On Six Additional Pieces of Piano Music, Zeeberg takes on jazz standards dating back, in the case of "After You've Gone," more than one hundred years. Other familiar pieces include Fats Waller's "Honeysuckle Rose" and Duke Ellington's "(In My) Solitude." "I'm Confessin' that I Love You" and "Wild Is the Wind" round out the covers with a Zeeberg original, "Home Seen From Elsewhere" splitting the standards program.

Zeeberg's unconventional method keeps its distance in recognizing original styles, even while paying homage to several jazz eras. These renditions are confrontational and challenging but aware and respectful of origins. There is irony and a sly sense of humor just below the surface, and it points to Zeeberg's ability to break the rules without going off the rails completely. His arrangement, appropriate to the era, applies a ragtime theme to "After You've Gone," though the original was more an urbane crossover. "Honeysuckle Rose" is predominantly exciting free improvisation revealing its roots only between the cracks, and "Solitude" is part dirge, part tribute to the composer.

Each piece in Six Additional Pieces of Piano Music is preceded by a brief spoken introduction, which may or may not strike the listener as humorous. Although the introductions feel unnecessary and neither add nor detract from the music, the achievement of this fine recording is solely based on Zeeberg's ability to blend aging classics with post-modern improvisation.