Customer Reviews

Earth Tones

5 star:		(4)
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The inventive, tight performances of this power trio displays a level of communication and understanding that makes it one of the very best trio discs of recent issue. Peter Bernstein is an extremely talented composer and guitarist. With Larry Goldings, one of today's finer keyboard players on Hammond B3 (and a brilliant composer in his own right) and Bill Stewart on drums (well-deserving of just having been voted jazz drummer of the year for the past three years by "Modern Drummer Magazine") giving sensitive, exciting and imaginative performances, "Earth Tones" displays a varied array of musical styles all with very accessible and even catchy hooks. "Acrobat" written by Goldings and "Carrot Cake" written by Bernstein are just two tunes that instantly come to mind as charts that should become future standards. Without question, this disc should have appeared on a major with substantial backing and label support.

Peter Bernstein's playing on Earth Tones is beautiful with his strong sense of melody and depth of phrasing, which is present if he is the leader or a sideman. What sets Earth Tones apart is composition. Peter has chosen three standards which in his hands sound like originals and five originals which sound like standards, my favorite being "Carrot Cake" a classic funk driven vamp which embodies everything modern jazz should be.

I fully agree with the other reviewers, the song "Carrot Cake".. well once you heard then it s there. Bernstein plays so cool and so beautiful, one good example of this is the standard "who can I turn to", and by the way, what an intro he does on that song.Bernstein and Goldings go so well together they are both cool players with a fantastic groove so that is as I suppose the reason why they blend so well. Players like Jimmy Smith and Joey de Fransesco are "hot" players and really know how to strike a groove, but question is if it do not "hit you harder" when it is done the way Goldings does it. I have Hank Mobleys song "The Breakthrough " in mind, first Goldings gives it a try and suddenly he "takes off" and his bass lines kills me. So if you like Bernstein and Goldings and do not have this one, buy it it is a must have.

I really enjoyed this album I recommend it to anyone that is a new or experienced listener in this genre of music!