Kurt Rosenwinkel: Undercover: Live At The Village Vanguard

Kurt Rosenwinkel records in a variety of situations, either from inclination or to keep himself and his audience fresh or both. In 2022 alone, he released three unusually diverse albums: Plays Piano, a solo outing on which he plays piano only; The Chopin Project, a co-led disc with pianist Jean-Paul Brodbeck exploring the work of Frederic Chopin; and Berlin Baritone, another solo album, this time playing a baritone guitar.

Undercover: Live At The Village Vanguard is back in more conventional jazz territory. Rosenwinkle leads a quartet completed by pianist and keyboardist Aaron Parks, bassist Eric Revis and drummer Gregory Hutchinson on a programme of originals.

With a pleasingly liquid sound and sure melodic touch, Rosenwinkel's connections with jazz heritage are strong. Two foundational influences suggest themselves. One is Pat Metheny, sixteen years Rosenwinkle's senior, primarily for Metheny's embrace of effects technology. Rosenwinkel, too, employs a multiplicity of gadgets, and like Metheny does so with originality and taste. The second figure is pianist Bill Evans, with whom Rosenwinkel shares a talent for harmonic invention, his approach including, but not being limited to, some of Evans' particular fingerprints.

Undercover kicks off with two exhilarating, medium-up-tempo tunes, "Cycle Five" and "The Past Intact." So thoroughly manipulated is Rosenwinkel's guitar tone that one could be excused for thinking it is a guitar synth (Rosenwinkel has been known to play a guitar synth, but the sleeve credits here simply list him as playing "guitar"). Combined with Parks' use of what sounds like a Wurlitzer organ (again, the sleeve credits do not go into details) on "Cycle Five," the overall effect at times puts one in mind of the Pat Metheny Group's chugger "Are You Going With Me?" Another muscular piece is "Our Secret World," with a rougher edge than the PMG favoured.

There are two ballads, "Solé" (check the YouTube below) and "Music," with the former's topline and guitar harmonies evoking Bill Evans. Interestingly, there is less of an Evans connection on Rosenwinkel's performance of the tune on the limited edition 2022 album Piano Solo on the audiophile-vinyl label LP345. And while we are thinking Evans, the use of triple-time on "Music" rings the bell again. On the closing title track, Rosenwinkel and Parks uncharacteristically go borderline chromatic.

Postscript: In case you missed it, earlier in 2023 Elemental Records released an audiophile-vinyl edition of Rosenwinkel's second album as leader, the 2-LP Intuit (originally released as a Criss Cross CD in 1998). All but one of the ten tracks are covers and include Irving Berlin's "How Deep Is The Ocean?," Jimmy Van Heusen's "Darn That Dream," George Gershwin's "Summertime" and two versions of George Shearing's "Conception." There are also three up-tempo pieces by Charlie Parker: "Dewey Square," "Sippin' At Bells" and "Segment."