Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Leslie Pintchik: So Glad to Be Here

194

Leslie Pintchik: So Glad to Be Here

By

View read count
Leslie Pintchik: So Glad to Be Here
It's happened to a lot of us, getting hit really hard by the music of Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. Most of us, though, don't—after taking the hit—give up the beginnings of a promising career in academia to pursue jazz full bore; but that's what pianist Leslie Pintchik did, and So Glad to Be Here is the result—and a superb one—of that career change.

Pintchik put together her first trio in '92, but So Glad to Be Here is her debut. The set opens with Kern and Hammerstein's "All the Things You Are," in a softly yet insistently propulsive mode. Next up is Irving Berlin's "You Keep Coming Back Like a Song." The pair of standards serves as a wonderfully familiar introduction to Pintchik's sound. The parallels between this trio and Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio seems obvious, with "All the Things You Are" suffused with a Jarrett-like low-grade tumultuousness channeled by the melody, and a seemingly effortless group cohesion, into an implacable and inevitable—but not forceful—forward momentum; while "You Keep Coming Back..." glides through time.

The trio gets into a relaxed groove on bassist Scott Hardy's "Scamba," a jaunty roll that gets dashed with an unexpected array of colors by drummer Satoshi Takeishi. The percussionist splashes and knocks, and sometimes he—briefly—sounds as if he's got the table knives out to clatter and tink and rattle on the pots and pans hanging from the kitchen's ceiling rack, maintaining long stretches of subtlety and texture interspersed with sudden hollow and/or metallic exclamations.

Seven Pintchik originals follow, revealing a composer with a flair for the lyrical, well-constructed, engaging melodies, strong efforts all, with "Terse Tune" chosen here as a particular favorite—edgy, dark-toned, maybe a bit manic. Pintchik closes things out with a tune from one of the giants who hit her and knocked her into this career in music—Monk's "We See," the trio sounding relaxed and ebullient, a bright and jaunty four-minute wrap-up on a fine debut disc.

Visit Leslie Pintchik on the web at www.lesliepintchik.com .

Track Listing

All the Things You Are; You Keep Coming Back Like a Song; Scamba; Hopperesque; Let's Get Lucky; Happy Dog; Mortal; Terse Tune; Luscious; SOmething Lost; We See

Personnel

Leslie Pintchik (piano), Scott Hardy (bass), Satoshi Takeishi (percussion)

Album information

Title: So Glad to Be Here | Year Released: 2004 | Record Label: Ambient Records

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.