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OKB TRIO
The Ing ...
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Queens Jazz OverGround QJOG-1801 [69:50]
LESLIE PINTCHIK
You Eat My Food, You Drink My Wine, You Steal My Girl!
PINTCH HARD CD-004 [46:37]
You Eat My Food, You Drink My Wine, You Steal My Girl!
I'm Glad There Is You
Mortal
Your Call Will Be Answered by Our Next Available Representative, In the Order in Which It Was Received. Please Stay on The Line; Your Call Is Important to Us
Hopperesque
Happy Dog
A Simpler Time
Leslie Pintchik (piano); Steve Wilson (alto saxophone); Ron Horton (trumpet, flugelhorn); Shoko Nagai (accordion); Scott Hardy (acoustic bass, electric bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar); Michael Sarin (drums); Satoshi Takeishi (percussion)
Pianist Leslie Pintchik infiltrates two standards into her programme of eight pieces in a recital long on wit and sass. The opener is an across-the-board complaint called You Eat My Food, You Drink My Wine, You Steal My Girl! a title that makes up in drollery what it loses in compression. This rollicking up-tempo number is full of avuncular breeziness. She brings reflective Latin intimacy to Jimmy Dorsey’s I'm Glad There Is You which is played with richness and lyricism: a special shout-out to Scott Hardy’s articulate bass pizzicati and the fine playing of a trio anchored by drummer Michael Sarin.
Rather than intersperse the standards Pintchick follows this with Smoke Gets in Your Eyes which she takes at a decidedly up-tempo clip and to which she brings a kind of aphoristic intelligence; note again the bass player’s splendid contribution. Her composition Mortal, cast in a significantly melancholic vein, is full of rich, resonant piano chords, a thoughtful alto airing from Steve Wilson and a taut flugelhorn solo courtesy of Ron Horton. But the dice are there to be rolled and the next track (it’s too long to reprise here but begins Your Call Will Be Answered – check the header for the full, extremely funny title) upends melancholy via subversive humour. The wry theme keeps stopping and then restarting and Sarin’s drums add their own droll commentary via fills. Great stuff.
In the Night Hawks vista conjured by Hopperesque Pintchik introduces the accordion of Shoko Nagai. There’s a reflective, nostalgic, rather musette feel here, and the accordion also plays its part inHappy Dog, a very much more avuncular number. Finally, there’s A Simpler Time, with its pleasing lyrical melody and crisp trio ensemble.
Pintchik is a fine and fluid piano stylist and she pens droll, lyric, and plangent themes. I don’t know if she tap-dances and can eradicate world poverty, but she’s put together a really splendid, life-affirming album.
Jonathan Woolf