MUSIC REVIEW BY Stephen Graham, Marlbank (UK)
As a way of introduction let's talk about Elvis Costello first. Because the best thing on this very unassuming but more-ish piano trio-with-vocals album from American player and academic Dawn Clement is the treatment of a ballad from the great 'Shipbuilding' icon's North (2003) - 'Someone Took the Words Away'. Great choice. We could be diving for pearls. And do, dipping in here.
North was very jazz inflected, not surprising you internet sleuths out there will know given that people like Lee Konitz, Lew Soloff, Peter Erskine, Bill Ware and Conrad Herwig were on that album.
But I digress. Turning to Delight, Matt Wilson is quite Peter Erskine-like here, maybe that's inevitable if you are a drummer and know the Costello version.
Weather Report icon Erskine this year was in our thoughts with his luminous Vienna to Hollywood: Impressions of E.W. Korngold & Max Steiner release also issued by Seattle jazz indie Origin.
While that aforementioned North version benefitted from a more sumptuous horn laden arrangement and that remarkable voice of Costello's this very different treatment from Clement is a tonic. As a piano player Clement's sound is a little Joanne Brackeen like. As a singer she has a light, slightly folkish timbre to her sound that comes with a crystal clear melodic essence that undauntingly ascends up the rickety lines of the melody scale and brings out the plaintive quality of the words in a quite different way to Costello's.
Clement's is a different way into the anguish of the song that confesses "It's strange to finally find myself so tongue-tied/A change has come over me, I'm powerless to express."
Buster Williams fans will gravitate most of all to the bass icon's work on the classic 'Alone Together'. The album includes Clement originals and versions of standards like 'Monk's Dream' that forms another strand of an album that surely will do Clement's profile internationally a world of good. If you are into English pianists Nikki Iles and Zoe Rahman this is another reason to find additional Delight.
North was very jazz inflected, not surprising you internet sleuths out there will know given that people like Lee Konitz, Lew Soloff, Peter Erskine, Bill Ware and Conrad Herwig were on that album.
But I digress. Turning to Delight, Matt Wilson is quite Peter Erskine-like here, maybe that's inevitable if you are a drummer and know the Costello version.
Weather Report icon Erskine this year was in our thoughts with his luminous Vienna to Hollywood: Impressions of E.W. Korngold & Max Steiner release also issued by Seattle jazz indie Origin.
While that aforementioned North version benefitted from a more sumptuous horn laden arrangement and that remarkable voice of Costello's this very different treatment from Clement is a tonic. As a piano player Clement's sound is a little Joanne Brackeen like. As a singer she has a light, slightly folkish timbre to her sound that comes with a crystal clear melodic essence that undauntingly ascends up the rickety lines of the melody scale and brings out the plaintive quality of the words in a quite different way to Costello's.
Clement's is a different way into the anguish of the song that confesses "It's strange to finally find myself so tongue-tied/A change has come over me, I'm powerless to express."
Buster Williams fans will gravitate most of all to the bass icon's work on the classic 'Alone Together'. The album includes Clement originals and versions of standards like 'Monk's Dream' that forms another strand of an album that surely will do Clement's profile internationally a world of good. If you are into English pianists Nikki Iles and Zoe Rahman this is another reason to find additional Delight.
Soundclips
Other Reviews of
"Delight":
Los Angeles Jazz Scene by Scott Yanow
Modern Drummer by Mark Griffith
Making a Scene Magazine by Dee Dee McNeil
All About Jazz by Paul Rauch
Jazz Weekly by George W Harris
Paris Move by Thierry De Clemensat