Dan Dean: Vocalise

Dan Dean has created a new music genre, a choir-of-angels approach molded via meticulous overdubs using one voice. His own. Fans of the bassist (vocalist, sound shaper, engineer) could not have had a clue as to this vocalise direction Dean would take from listening to 2010's Duets (Origin Records) with vibraphonist Tom Collier or to 2 5 1 (Origin Records, 2010), a marvelous set that featured bassist Dean accompanied by keyboardists George Duke, Larry Goldings, Gil Goldstein and Kenny Werner (review here). These were straight-ahead instrumental jazz albums, but not ones that would be tagged as experimental. The floodgates to that end of the pool for Dean was 2017's Origin Records set Songs Without Words (review here). This is where the celestial choir took flight, with Dean sitting in for God (and the angels), taking all of the vocal and studio duties.

Fanfare for the Common Man (Origin Records, 2021) followed (review here), with Dean diving deeper into this layered vocals form of expression.

For those of a "but is it jazz" frame of mind, these previously mentioned sets—and the one at hand, Vocalise, could not be, by any stretch, called jazz, if that matters. Call them "studio-crafted, experimental classical works." Dean explores the music of Vivaldi, J.S. Bach and more on Songs Without Words; he examines Aaron Copland, Mendelssohn, Holst and, again, Bach on his Fanfare For the Common Man. With Vocalise we hear Dean's take on compositions by Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Holst and Gabriel Fauré.

This glorious music—soaring, symphonic, mind-bending, intricate, complex yet ultimately approachable—is an immersion into a modern nondenominational spiritual vision from the melding of Dean's creative vision with some classical greats.

"Sergei Prokofiev: Toccata in D Minor, Opus 11" sounds like a twenty-voice choir joining hands with a doo-wop band (pompadours not required), "Igor Stravinsky: L'Histoire d'un Soldat, Triumphal March of the Devil" sounds aggressive, a sonic knocking down of the city gates. "Gustav Holst: Suite 1, Mvt. 2, Interlude" bubbles with joy, while "Sergei Prokofiev: Montagues and Capulets" hums like the background noise of the pre-bigbang universe. Then it explodes, followed by a dreamy reverie. How Dean made this with just his voice is a mystery. As it is with much of the album.

And if Dean's choice of material leans deeply into the profound and weighty classical composers, he closes the show with a surprise: "Mark Knopfler: Going Home (Theme of the Local Hero)" from the pen of the front man of the rock group Dire Straights. It is an uplifting and reflective piece the guitarist wrote for the movie Local Hero, that sounds here, in Dan Dean's re-creation, as profoundly beautiful as all of the music that precedes it.