In a season when most music is either cacophony or navel gazing, it’s refreshing when you get an album that mixes clever ideas along with confident tones and a swingingly soulful sound. Daniel Nissenbaum plays trumpet, piccolo trumpet and synths in a pair of settings, with the first team including Dutch Masters Koen Schalkwijk/p, Tijs Klaasen/b and Joan Terol Amigo’/dr and the second team, from Philly, featuring Mark Allen/ts-gs and Steve Tirpak/tb-p. There are also various guests on strings, orchestra, guitar, drums and voices that have the album resulting in a multi-colored palate of rich tones and directions.
Nissenbaum’s horn is warm and clear on the classy baroque fugue of “Allegro” and teams well with the Mozartian strings on “Prelude” while “Requiem (For My Father)” melds synthesizers and his open horn in a passionate declaration. There are a trio of “Rounders” tunes with the Philadelphia team, with “Prayer” including a liturgical mix of voices and narration, solemn horns on “Dream” and classical directions on “Tempo”.
The Holland band delivers a lovely and l yrical folk tune “ Ach Kesem” that has the leader in a bright and crisp mood, while sleek keyboards veer with the rhythm section on segues and rabbit trails on the post bopper “In Bright and Deep”. Rumbling drums percolating with piano and richly swaying strings reach a wondrous climax on “Ribbons Down My Back” and the groove cuts deep on “Magic Doors”. Nissenbaum and company avoid the trap of making the various sounds appear gratuitous, instead each piece tune comes off like a sonic chip of marble in a musical mosaic. Check this one out!