|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A review of Jeff
Chan's "Winds Shifting" from
The San Francisco Bay Guardian, January 14, 1998
(click on the
cover to listen to and/or buy this album)
 |
Despite tight affiliations
in the Bay Area's Asian American jazz scene (Francis Wong being a major
influence), tenor saxophonist Jeff Chan doesn't make any obvious moves
toward East-West fusion. Instead, he simply applies a beautiful, solid
sax tone to inventive melodies in relatively open harmonic and rhythmic
and harmonic contexts and lets the music develop freely. His impressive
recording debut moves from an explicitly Ornette Coleman/Charlie Parker-influenced
opener through a variety of moods and textures on lengthy compositions
and improvisations: Kavee adds cello on "Dreams/Silver Skies";
Neil Straghalis plays piano on the Coltrane-like "Spiritual";
and Wong sits in on the two-tenor tempo-shifting. 14 minute "Cactus
Patch", the album's lovely closing rumination. Fans of intense and
meditative post-bebop acoustic jazz from the '60's and '70's will find
rich rewards in Chan's alternately edgy and rhapsodic take on that tradition.
|
||
|
top | reviews page | home |
