David Chesky - Jazz In The New Harmonic

Stereophile Editor's Pick for Recording of the Month

Performance 4/5 stars, Sonics 5/5

A Stereophile 2014 Record To Die For

If there's a word that describes the feeling, the vibe present throughout Jazz in the New Harmonic, writes Stereophile's Robert Baird, it's trance. Pianist and session leader David Chesky even uses it without prompting when asked how, among all his music endeavors — an album of difficult non-Joplin-like Rags in 2012, a children's ballet later this year, not to mention running Chesky Records — he found the time or inspiration to make a straight-ahead jazz record.

Chesky replied in an interview that he's taken classical music language — modern harmony and dissonance — and fused it with a groove, making it swing. "It's like a trance — you just go into trance mode, and you wander, and it envelops you," Chesky says.

Wandering and enveloping certainly are the keys to this low-key, very cool-to-the-touch session, Stereophile's Editor's Pick Recording Of The Month for September. Here, the band of peerless talent meander through Chesky's minimalist compositions, darting in and out for economic solos, "and yet there's a coherence to the material and a panache to the playing that makes this wispy, subtle set a soothing listen," Baird writes in his review.

"Despite all the musical talent present, the biggest star is the sound. ... The sonics are astonishingly spacious, detailed and multidimensional — in most ways absolutely flawless, and nearly everything you can expect or dream about from well-recorded sound." — Robert Baird, Stereophile, September 2013

Jazz In the New Harmonic

Broadway

American Culture X

Duke's Groove

Grooves From the Underground

Deconstruction

Burnout

Transcendental Tripping

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