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Sal Mosca Quartet: You Go to My Head
The music on this CD was recorded in Mosca's Mount Vernon, NY studio in February and March, 2004, with a quartet of relatively younger, like-minded musicians: Jimmy Halperin (tenor saxophone), Don Messina (bass) and Bill Chattin (drums). It's clearly convivial company for Mosca, one of the secret treasures of jazz piano, as the group negotiates a series of standards, Charlie Parker tunes and two Tristano-school classics: Marsh's "Background Music" and Konitz' "Sub Conscious-Lee."
There's a kinetic brilliance to much of what Mosca touches, whether it's flying runs and percussive punctuations or extraordinary two-hand inventions in which one seems simultaneously to shadow and expand on the other. Halperin is a fluid foil, playing tenor with an alto-like lightness of tone and there's often a sense of real collective inventionthe friction of improvised counterpointin the music. It's increasingly unusual to hear a band that can find fresh harmonic inspiration in material as familiar as "Somebody Loves Me" and "How High the Moon," but Mosca and company consistently do it here.
Track Listing
Somebody Loves Me; You Go to My Head; Scrapple from the Apple; Sub Conscious-Lee; Nice Work If You Can Get It; I Can't Get Started; How High the Moon; Groovin' High; Background Music.
Personnel
Sal Mosca
pianoSal Mosca, piano; Jimmy Halperin, tenor saxophone; Don Messina, bass; Bill Chattin, drums.
Album information
Title: You Go to My Head | Year Released: 2008 | Record Label: Blue Jack Jazz
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