No Sadness (Magri) [5:50] *
Stray Form (Geller) [4:36]
Some Other Spring (Kitchings/Herzog) [5:16]
Key Largo (Carter) [4:38]
A New Town Is A Blue Town (Adler/Ross) [7:08]
Here I’ll Stay (Weill/Lerner) [5:33]
Ah Moore (Cohn) [5:03]
Il Bello del Jazz (Magris) [5:14] *
Pretty Woman (Sondheim) [6:04]
Parker’s Pen (Magris) [5:07] *
Deception (Geller) [6:48] *
Herb Geller (alto sax)
Roberto Magris (piano)
Darko Jurkovic (guitar) *
Rudi Engel (bass)
Gabriele Centis (drums)
rec. 28, 30 August, 2003, Urban Recording
Studios, Trieste
The excellent Italian pianist
Roberto Magris has been leading his group
Europlane, with a number of changes of personnel,
for some time now. The present incarnation
includes another Italian in drummer Gabriele
Centis (from Trieste, like Magris), the Croatian
guitarist Darko Jurkovic and the German bassist
Rudi Engel. Here they are joined by American
alto saxophonist Herb Geller. The result is
a highly enjoyable album in the mainstream-modern
idiom.
Geller – born in 1928 – might
reasonably be described as a veteran. His
rich musical experience included early work
with Joe Venuti, Lucky Millinder and Claude
Thornhill, touring with Benny Goodman and
Louie Bellson. He has recorded with many jazz
greats - Chet Baker, Clifford Brown, Max Roach,
Red Mitchell, Barney Kessel, Kenny Dorham,
Hank Jones, Shelly Manne and Kenny Drew, to
mention but a few. He moved to Europe in the
1960s, playing and recording with, amongst
others, the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big
Band, and bands led by Peter Herbolzheimer,
Friedrich Gulda and George Gruntz. For a good
number of years he was an important presence
in the excellent Norddeutscher Rundfunk Orchestra
in Hamburg (where he still lives). Teamed
here with much younger musicians – Magris,
for example, was born in 1959 – he plays with
energy, vitality, clarity and ravishing sensitivity.
Geller’s playing owes at least as much to
Benny Carter as it does to the Parker tradition;
Johnny Hodges is also part of the particular
mixture that is Geller’s own voice.
Given that Magris is a fine
pianist – thoroughly schooled in all the post-bop
piano idioms, but with surprising touches
of Teddy Wilson from time to time – and that
the rest of Europlane are also very accomplished
(not least Jurkovic, who solos particularly
well on ‘Parker’s Pen’), there’s no wonder
that this is so enjoyable a CD.
The repertoire has been very
well chosen. There’s an explicit nod to Carter
in the choice of his ‘Key Largo’; Geller’s
‘Stray Form’ clearly alludes, in both title
and style, to Billy Strayhorn, Ellington’s
‘Swea-Pea’. ‘Some Other Spring’ is an unhackneyed
choice and Magris’ originals offer considerable
stimulation for soloists. There is an attractive
mixture of hard swinging and lyricism, of
grace and boppish bite.
The interplay between Magris
and Geller is outstanding throughout, not
least in the duo version of ‘Some Other Spring’.
All in all an excellent CD of mature, intelligent
jazz, expressive and swinging, high level
musicianship from musicians with something
to say.
Glyn Pursglove
CD Reviews
Soul Note 121395-2 [61:24] 
