Yvonne Rogers: The Button Jar

It should not be as hard as it is to pinpoint the beauty of pianist/composer Yvonne Rogers's sublime piano, but it is. You listen to "Little Dance" from the intimate and intricate calligraphy of her Kris Davis produced The Button Jar and say to yourself "There it is!" Then, the next track, "Thread the Needle," enters the ether and, sure enough, that shimmering elegance is shining forth right there. Before that, the unravelling textures of "Luster" pull your presence elsewhere.

That elsewhere being rural Maine, where Rogers knew a childhood without TV, thus making the pure, simple, solo, whole of The Button Jar—fourteen resplendent miniatures that tell of a lifetime—the best reason yet to put down every accursed screen and listen to the real world blossom about you. Hear (and envision) Roger's chase through the fields, the shadows cast by "Cloud Chorale." Imagine the pianist— whose gigs include Davis, Adam O’Farrill, Linda May Han Oh, Ingrid Laubrock, among numerous others—imping Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp waddle with the keenly playful "Scatter and Sort."

The dense and telling "Monkey Fist" and the fully improvised "Avid Risks" and "Exhale" may, on impulse, sound like dark outliers, but they too soon join the overall arc of inquisitive and infectious charm Rogers first brought to play on her somewhat overlooked debut Seeds (Relative Pitch Records, 2023)  There is a very strong, no, make that tactile and present sense of place to Rogers work. And it is a sense of place that one need not be from the backwoods of anywhere to appreciate and take to heart. A place to set aside the screens and breathe.