For a good cure of the winter blues, I decided to spend a nice cozy
evening listening to some jazz from current University of Toronto music
students.
The trio, consisting of vocalist Ariel Shetzen, pianist Jacob
Thompson, and bassist Chris Brinton, performed an excellent program of
standards that show diversity, range, uniqueness and class from start to
finish.
The trio digs right away with a rousing blues called “Centerpiece”,
where from the get go the trio is locked into a heavy groove and all of the
musicians are having a great time with the source material. Ariel’s performance echoes soulfulness and
creativity through her diction, delivery, and scatting; Jacob’s performance was
thundering and full of wonder (even adding grunts a la Oscar Peterson and Keith
Jarrett to really dig and feel the music); Chris’ timekeeping is impeccable
plus a tasty bass solo to top things off.
The standard “Day by Day” swings easily and blithely without
stopping or letting go of emotion; the ballad feature “Dreamsville” is
performed just how the title suggests: dream-like and treating the performance
like an expressive story. The ballad
medley has taken three of the most beloved ballad melodies (“My Foolish Heart”,
“Detour Ahead”, and “The Very Thought of You”) and the trio takes it with such
maturity, poise and respect that is just highly remarkable in their young
lives; by the closing number “Beautiful Love”, the trio showed its true simpatico,
was clearly an in-sync unit, and they absolutely had a great time and sheer
enthusiasm with the choice material.
A great night of straight ahead, swinging jazz produced by great
up-and-coming talent shows that the future of jazz is surely bright and has no
signs of slowing down.
(From Left: Jacob Thompson, Ariel Shetzen, Chris Brinton)
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