03 July 2009
Jazz Breakfast
Peter Bacon

Pianist Fred Simon writes a kind of charming American pastoral jazz, full of good tunes and pleasing chord sequences - music that will never make great waves to change the course of the music but instead will bring gentle ripples of pleasure to many listeners. And in the end, isn't that just as important, and maybe even more so.?

For this quartet disc he has Paul McCandless on reeds (for so long associated with the oboe and with first the Winter Consort and then Oregon), Steve Rodby on bass (longtime Pat Metheny Group member and co-producer for Pat and others, including Simon here), and Mark Walker on drums (who has toured as part of Oregon and is associate prof of percussion at Berklee).

It's all originals except for a neat version of In A Silent Way. The last thing I imagined when I first heard the Miles album as a
17-year-old was that one day bands would be covering this song and turning into a new jazz standard. It just seemed the tune was so inextricably linked to the arrangement and general feel of the recording... but you learn a lot over 40 years, or rather you get taught a lot.

There are happy, "up" tunes here like the wishful thinking No War Nowhere, and there are moodier, darker toned pieces like In The Evening, where McCandless's lovely, lachrymose woodwind comes into its own. I Know You Know sounds like it could have been written by Metheny - or perhaps Huw Warren... it has that strength of a traditional folk song.

There is a compositional, controlled and considered mood to the whole album and all the playing, and the recording is as fine as you would expect from the makers of high-end hi-fi.