Customer Reviews

Close to My Heart

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Jazz trumpeter Jeremy Pelt must be a NICE PERSON. He puts together jazz favorites, a lot of them Fifties-flavored, with the help of his friends. Nice friends he has, too, pianist Mulgrew Miller is absolutely enthralling, there are strings (to give that classic big-jazz arrangement effect, but not overdone in the least), and there's the arrangement and guitar work by conductor/arranger/guitarist David O'Rourke. The effect, with Pelt's buttery-soft but perfectly modulated horn is that smmooooooth Fifties sophisticated jazz club sound mixed with modern sensibilities of tonality, texture and arrangement. Familiar, like an echo, but not boring--new and not new all in one. This makes you listen and listen again.

I listened to this entire CD with a sigh of pleasure, and hit the replay button on the CD player immediately. If you like jazz horn, if you like jazz with a new take on classics, you may like this as much as I did. Jeremy Pelt, you are absolutely superb.

Close To My Heart Released Sept. 2003
Jeremy Pelt, trumpet & flugelhorn
Mulgrew Miller, piano
Peter Washington, bass
Lewis Nash, drums
Meg Okura, violin
Joyce Hammann, violin
Ron Lawrence, viola
Dave Eggar, cello
David O' Rourke, guitar, arranger & conductor

How do you make music so classically beautiful sound so fresh?

The simple answer is, You don't, usually. The trick is to bring out the intrinsic ravishing melodicism of jazz standards while avoiding mawkish sentimentalism. The only way to effectively do this is to immerse yourself in the tradition, but then transcend it with your own unique approach. Jeremy Pelt, perhaps the Next Big Thing on jazz trumpet and flugelhorn, accomplishes this by walking a fine line between inappropriate sentiment and a structurally solid intuited jazz understanding wrapped around a gorgeous, burnished, ravishing sound from his two horns.

Of course, it doesn't hurt to be backed by perhaps the wisest and most seasoned pianist on the scene, Mulgrew Miller, as well as monster cohorts Peter Washington (bass) and Louis Nash (drums). Augment this with a very hip and tasty string quartet on about half the cuts, and you've got something special going down.

A wonderful continuation of some very smart recordings ("Sequel" by Mulgrew Miller and Wingspan and "Falling Up," by Geoffrey Keezer) on the Maxjazz label.

My first experience with Jeremy Pelt was listening to Haiku (from Identity). A great song on an impressive CD. Close to My Heart disappoints because of the five overly orchestrated simply awful songs on the CD. The other five are good solid pieces. So unless you are into mush, bypass this one.

I have never been so addicted to a CD. I cannot stop listening to CLOSE TO MY HEART. Its been months now and my CD player is still stuck to the "repeat" mode. Why? Because Jeremy Pelt has taken a traditional genre and, with his shapely mind, created something completely original within that genre. If evolution is the essence of nature, transcendence is the essence of art. And this exquisite, haunting record is high art.

When players like Pelt are getting praise - there's too much hype over "young lions". This guy never quite hits it...