Duck Baker - Spinning Song: Duck Baker Plays The Music Of Herbie Nichols (1996/2015)

When the pianist and composer Herbie Nichols died in 1963, his work was little known outside of a small circle of colleagues and admirers. A contemporary and associate of Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, Nichols made joyous music by fusing complex rhythms and harmonies. With the recent release of his complete Blue Note recordings, however, Nichols's work has begun to reach the wider audience it has always deserved. This disc stands out among CD tributes for the way in which Duck Baker has fused Nichols's compositions with his extraordinary finger-style guitar work. Baker has entered deep into the spirit of the music and found ways to match Nichols's polyrhythmic and contrapuntal keyboard approach on his own instrument. The results are musically as well as technically brilliant, rich in the blues and Caribbean rhythms that fueled Nichols's musical imagination. These tunes deserve to be jazz standards, and Baker demonstrates why. --Stuart Broomer