Jeff Platz Quartet - Panoramic (Skycap Records, 2010) ****

On a previous review, I shared my appreciation's for Boston guitarist Jeff Platz's use of gentle openness, his free approach to familiarity. Now he continues in the same vein, still with Kit Demos on acoustic bass and John Mclellan on drums, but now with Daniel Carter on reeds and trumpet. The music is more abstract, more free-form, but that adds to its quality of his compositions, which hesitate between the intense ("Trinket") and the ethereal ("Dance Of The Minotaurs"), with an often boppish rhythmic basis, but going well beyond conventions to increase the expressivity of his band. And that must be said, the quartet is a wonderful example of cohesive playing, with all musicians focused on the total sound, rather than on their individual solo moments, together building an overall sketchy impression, with jagged lines, raw interfaces, powerful strokes, lots of blank space, yet full of lyricism, fragility and intimacy. To their credit, they maintain this rather unusual and paradoxical approach despite the broad, yes panoramic, span of the compositions. Recommended.

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© stef