Mike Garson - Conversations with My Family (2008)

There are some myopic individuals in the jazz world who dislike any music that isn't straight-ahead acoustic jazz; they dislike rock, funk, and hip-hop as much as they dislike country. But there are also skillful musicians who can play jazz quite well but also have strong non-jazz credentials, and pianist/keyboardist/composer Mike Garson is one of them. Garson is best known in the rock world for his long association with David Bowie -- an association that is highly appropriate given Bowie's chameleonic nature and Garson's impressive ability to adapt to a variety of musical settings. Conversations with My Family, which is one of Garson's jazz-oriented projects, finds the veteran pianist working with arranger Kuno Schmid as well as trumpeter Claudio Roditi, violinist Chris Howes, guitarist Andreas Öberg, flutist Lori Bell, and bassist Bob Magnusson. Schmid doesn't provide all of the arrangements, but he provides a lot of them -- and Schmid's thoughtful, classical-influenced arrangements sometimes suggest Gil Evans, while Garson's acoustic pianism draws on the influence of another Evans: pianist Bill Evans. Albums that have as much arranging as Conversations with My Family can -- depending on who the arrangers are -- bury the main soloist and deprive him/her of solo space. But neither Schmid's arrangements nor Garson's arrangements allow Garson's piano to become buried or obscured; Garson still has plenty of room to stretch out -- and Roditi (one of the finest jazz trumpeters to come out of Brazil) gets in a few noteworthy solos as well. Working with Schmid is definitely advantageous for Garson on this worthwhile post-bop disc © Alex Henderson