The Parts You Keep

John Patitucci's sleevenote quote describes fellow bassist Mike Pope as "a real renaissance man". This release finds Pope, whose own approach to bass shadows Patitucci's fluent bounce, is more a man of many parts.

The album's core is provided by a sparky piano trio led by pianist Geoffrey Keezer with bassist Pope ably underlying drummer Nate Smith's whiplash beats. Keezer and Smith's quality shine on the piano trio 'Misgivings', the album's opening track, and they continue to scatter highpoint solos and breaks throughout the set.

Elsewhere, trumpeter Randy Brecker sidles round smoochy strings on 'That Old Feeling' and Roxy Coss heads a canny re-interpretation of Coltrane's 'Giant Steps' on tenor sax. Coss joins sharp-toned guitarist Amaury Cabral for a calypso-ish reading of Charlie Parker's 'Steeplechase' and the nicely funky Pope original 'Barolo Blue'; and guitar and trumpet click into gear on the climax-and-fade original, 'Past is Prologue'.

The final two pieces take the album in a different direction. The rich harmonies of 'The Parts You Keep', fleshed out by guitar and sax, deliver a bitter-sweet mood bordering on romance. The piece ends with an excerpt of Pope's mother's touching solo rendition of composer Ernst Von Dohnányi's 'Sphärenmusik' from Winterreigen, Op13 No.5. The final track presents her performance in full.