Pianist and composer Craig Taborn has served as an expressive sideman for the likes of Chris Potter, Roscoe Mitchell and David Binney, as well as leading his own bands of various sizes. He recently released an intuitive collection of duets with similarly minded pianist Vijay Iyer, and here he goes completely solo, recorded while in a 2020 concert in Vienna.
The songs have an intuitive and inquisitive feel throughout the 70 minute event. He stretches out for 17 minutes with a mix of classical, meditation and story-telling chords on “Bird Templars” with an 18 minute journey of “Shadow Play” evocative of impressionists like Debussy and Satie, creating musical lily pads. His left hands repeats the theme over and over on “Conspiracy of Things”, as if looking for an exit to hop off with on the right hand, while the Windham Hillish “Concordia Discors” goes from vibrant dynamics to rabbit trail journeys. Most lyrical is the soft buildup on “A Code With Spells” and the melodic “Now In Hope”, both more succinct in both time and concept.
www.ecmrecords.com