Hazelrigg Brothers: Songs We Like

George Hazelrigg, pianist, and bassist Geoff Hazelrigg, The Hazelrigg Brothers, are owners of Hazelrigg Industries, a company that markets high-end audio gear; and they have crafted a high-end musical statement with Songs We Like, an inviting piano trio effort built mostly around popular rock songs. Jimi Hendrix is here; so is Ian Anderson, Jethro Tull's frontman, along with Sting and a pair of contributions from Led Zeppelin,  all rubbing elbows with Bela Bartok and Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer.

The rock tunes are laid down in a reimagined but still-recognizable fashion: the Led Zeppelin songs minus the explosiveness, with more nuance and refinement than expected, the Hendrix offering wrapped around a rhythmic tell-tale heartbeat in line with the guitarist's original version, but more ominous. Steely Dan's "King Of The World" sounds classic, as if it were made for the piano trio treatment.

The shift from the lugubrious, lub-dubian Hendrix tune to the prancing Bela Bartok  "Evening In The Country" somehow makes sense; and Sting's "Spirits In The Material World" lights the room up. Led Zeppelin's "What Is And What Should Never Be" dims those lights considerably.

The "sound" of the music is a factor here. Audiophiles to the max, the group has searched for—and found—a process of recording that captures to perfection the experience of hearing a piano trio in the real world—warm and interactive, organic, the bass embracing drums like it does from the seat in one of the front rows of a small jazz club, with the piano dancing inside that musical abrazo, on this highly-engaging debut.