By Jack Goodstein, BLOGCRITICS.ORG
Published 10:00 pm, Friday, November 1, 2013
Piano trios playing jazz are a dime a dozen, guitar trios as well. Trios featuring the mandolin are rare, to say the least. The mandolin may make its way into a larger ensemble every so often, but even that isn't a common occurrence. Rare, uncommon, perhaps even unique are the adjectives that best define Urban Mandolin, the new album from Chris Biesterfeldt. And while it might take a few hearings to get comfortable with the sound of a mandolin trio jazz album, Biesterfeldt and his crew, bassist Adam Armstrong and drummer Eric Halvorson are well worth the effort.
The album, which explores a wide musical range from bop to Bach and the Beach Boys, opens with two jazz classics-Dizzy Gillespie's "Bebop" and Charlie Parker's "Quasimodo." Maybe because of the unusual instrumentation, maybe because of the reverberations of the dynamic sound of the iconic originals, the trio sounds a bit thin. The sound begins to grow with "Freedom Jazz Dance" as first the mandolin and then the bass improvise over the strong work of Halvorson. By the time the album's fourth track, "Bach G-Minor Presto," takes off, the trio has hit its stride. Normally I am disappointed with jazz transcriptions of classical music, but not in this case. The Bach is a showpiece for Biesterfeldt.
Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/blogcritics/article/Music-Review-Chris-Biesterfeldt-Urban-4949294.php
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