Bill O'Connell's Jazz Latin

Man, I tell you...all this big band jazz has fried my brain. I'm not complaining by any means, since much of this music has been surprisingly great. It just seems as if my ears and my brain have become so used to the sound of big band jazz that this new release from keyboardist Bill O'Connell, Jazz Latin, sounds almost alien. This is the simple, intimate jazz I prefer in most cases--I love crawling up inside of the handful of instruments on stage and really digging out the details. You can't do that with big band jazz. It's all about riding that big sonic wave. This, however, is more my speed on a rainy day.

The word I'm looking for is refreshing. O'Connell plays his piano and Fender Rhodes in an unusually clear-headed way. He's on point with the melodies and he has a crisp and precise manner of improvising. You're not constantly wondering where he's going since he's a competent and affable guide. You can hear a little of Bill Evans in the way he glides up and down the keys. When he switches to his electric piano, he injects just the right amount of funk into the Latin-tinged excursions without spending too much time paying tribute to the past.

The core of this ensemble is a trio--O'Connell is joined by bassist Lincoln Goines and drummer Robby Ameen, who provide strong supports for the many guest stars including flugelhorn player Randy Brecker, sax player Craig Handy, trombone player Conrad Herwig, flutist Andrea Brachfeld and guitarist Dan Carillo. Goines' electric bass casts a unique sound for the trio and helps O'Connell to swing just a little harder, while Ameen is a madman and creates an ocean of percussive sounds that are essential to the conjuring of the necessary Latin connections.

I have reviewed Bill O'Connell before. I reviewed Monk's Cha Cha almost exactly one year ago. That was a solo piano album, recorded live, and yet I had almost the same responses to his performance--the Bill Evans comparison, the way he moves across the keyboard. I even used the same photo of him from the Google archives. That means just one thing, and it's a compliment about O'Connell's easily recognizable style. In jazz, that's an almost sure sign of greatness.

Bill O'Connell - Monk's Cha Cha on CD

I feel like it's been forever since I've blogged. I've just returned from the 2017 AXPONA Show in Chicago and trade shows traditionally take me out of the groove for at least a couple of weeks. Sometimes, and this is something I admit reluctantly, I even get tired of listening music and I need at least a few days of silence so that I can re-calibrate my ears.

This live solo piano CD from Bill O'Connell, Monk's Cha Cha, is therefore a soft landing, an easy way to assess the growing pile of review CDs and LPs without stressing out over deadlines and such. That's because O'Connell's playing can be lush and fluid like Bill Evans' playing. It just sort of flows over you and carries you along and fills your head full of intriguing yet sanguine ideas while it does so.

I'm not that familiar with Bill O'Connell's work--perhaps that's because this is his first solo piano recording as well as his first live recording. That's surprising since he's been playing professionally since 1977, starting off with the legendary Mongo Santamaria. He's played with Sonny Rollins, Gato Barbieri and Jerry Gonzalez as well. He's the real thing when it comes to jazz piano, and it seems to be a bit of a mystery in the industry as to why his recorded output is so limited. This recording, live from the Carnegie-Farian Room in Nyack, mixes standards with originals and cements his reputation among his fellow musicians as not only a strong composer but a pianist who masters the worlds of Latin jazz and bebop with equal grace and authority.

These Latin influences are one of the things that separates O'Connell's playing from Evans, however. Those jagged and dynamic rhythms are very much established in the music, even without percussion. But O'Connell possesses the same ability as Evans to produce a lot of notes in seamless and sinewy tangents. You'll definitely hear those wondrous cadences in tunes such as Santamaria's "Afro Blue" and Jobim's "Dindi."

I'm too exhausted right now to come up with vivid new ways to describe a solo piano recording. The parallels between O'Connell and Evans may be more elusive to you than me at this point. But what a recording like this does for my sanity cannot be underestimated--beautiful playing that gently prowls between genres without gaudy alerts announcing its intentions. It is a perfect tonic for right now.