Catch Your Breath

A stellar outing that introduces a group that plays with an interactive verve and elegance - a knockout listening experience.
- All About Jazz

San Francisco Bay-area pianist Debbie Poryes brings a warm touch and personal approach to her new quartet recording, named after the exhilarating opening tune, ?Catch Your Breath.? Supported by her longtime collaborators, drummer Dave Rokeach, bassist Bill Douglass, and saxophonist Bruce Williamson, Poryes's new album combines rhythmically sophisticated takes on standards like ?I've Got the Sun in the Morning? with several of Poryes's own works, such as the harmonically luscious ?Lake Dream? and the Gospel-tinged ?A Prayer for a Child.? This stunning and wide-ranging collection creates a distinct soundscape with each track, yet maintains the pianist's singular style.

Production Info:

Produced by Debbie Poryes
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Bruce Mishkit
at Deva Productions, Lafayette, CA
on May 29, 30 and 31, 2009.
Photography by George B. Wells
Liner notes: Herb Wong
Cover design by John Bishop

Reviews of Catch Your Breath

All About Jazz (C. Michael Bailey)
[...taken from a double review of Nelda Swiggett's This Time and Debbie Poryes] Where Nelda Swiggett performs smart jazz within angular if mainstream parameters, Debbie Poryes colors more outside the lines than Swiggett, her quartet's style bleeding into avant-garde and high-IQ adult contemporary. Expanding the trio to a quartet with the additio ...

All About Jazz (John Barron)
Recording a disc half-filled with overdone standards should require, at minimum, an attempt at dissection and redirection, investigating any harmonic and rhythmic possibilities left over after decades of use. Such is the case with the release of Catch Your Breath, from San Francisco Bay-area pianist Debbie Poryes. Poryes' approach to arranging invo ...

Jazz Chicago (Brad Walseth)
A musician you should be aware of is Bay-area pianist Debbie Poryes. We loved her 2007 CD - A Song in Jazz (see our review here) and this follow-up is even better - in part due to the lucky presence of saxophonist Bruce Williamson on some of the tracks. Williamson is a perfect fit along with bassist Bill Douglass and drummer David Rokeach. Poryes w ...

All Music Guide (Adam Greenberg)
Debbie Poryes likes to use a loping approach to the piano, as it quickly becomes clear on Catch Your Breath. On the album, her second release as a leader, she works her way through a set built upon both her own compositions and standards from the Great American Songbook. The album opens with the title track, a piece that simultaneously uses steppin ...

Oregon Jazz Scene (OJS)
Try as we might, there are too many ?uderdog? pianists out there to acquaint ourselves with all of them. However, one of those worth discovering is Debbie Poryes, a jazz pianist with taste, touch and talent. Her trio includes Bill Douglass, bass, and David Rokeach, drums. On most of the tunes here, she adds the alto and soprano sax of Bruce William ...

Cadence, Oct-Dec 2010 (Don Lerman)
One of the pleasant surprises of Catch Your Breath is the presence of bassist Douglass, who recorded with Art Tatum fifty-five years ago, still playing nobly. Poryes is an inventive pianist, taking familiar standards by established composers and setting them slightly askew to re-examine them. I would recommend her trio version of "I Should Care" as ...