David Hazeltine - Ballads and Blues Volume I (2024) Hi Res

It has come to my attention that over 40 + years of recording, fans very much appreciate the way that I arrange and perform ballads. I think my love for ballad playing goes back to my early years as a music student and how much I learned about harmony studying the solo piano recordings of the late great Bill Evans. He has a melancholy joyfulness in his approach to ballads and that sound has never left my ear.

At the sametime, playing the Blues has always come naturally to me perhaps because I understand the feeling so profoundly. So I had the idea to combine these two aspects of my musical character, and do an EP of Ballads and Blues, and with a nod to the late great McCoy Tyner, call it Ballads & Blues The Bassist and Drummer on these recordings are a great source of inspiration to me. Bassist
Neal Minor plays with such tonal, harmonic and rhythmic accuracy, that he is a must for this kind of date. Drummer Pete Van Nostrand interprets my music with a profound empathy, I feel like he's an extension of me! He plays with such accuracy and swing. Together with Neal, for me its like a magic carpet ride.

"Blues De Troy'' is a blues melody written by my good friend Cory Weeds. He asked me to harmonize it, and we recorded it together a few years ago. When I decided to put together a Ballads & Blues CD, Cory suggested this would make a nice trio blues. "Just Things'' is a sad song written for a friend of my wife, who recently passed away. Anne had the cutest little second hand store on the corner of our block in NYC, and I was always in there for last minute gift shopping. The sign on the door said "Only The Beautiful People S h o p Here"
"Felicia's Blues" is really more about my wife's blues. Felicia, who was my wife's Aunt, also recently passed away and needless to say, we both have Felicia's Blues. "When IFall In Love" has always been one of my favorite ballads. It has a harmonic openness to it, which allows me to implement some of my favorite "tear jerker" techniques.