1.You And The Night And The Music (Arthur Schwartz / Howard Dietz)
2.Jed's Place (Misha Tsiganov)
3.October In Kiev (Misha Tsiganov)
4.Yes Or No (Wayne Shorter)
5.Jumping Michael (Misha Tsiganov)
6.Infant Eyes (Wayne Shorter)
7.The Night Has A Thousand Eyes (Jerome Brainin)
8.Blues For Gerry (Misha Tsiganov)
9.Spring Feelings (Misha Tsiganov)
Personnel:
Misha Tsiganov (piano)
Alex Sipiagin (trumpet / fluegelhorn)
Seamus Blake (tenor sax)
Hans Glawischnig (bass)
Donald Edwards (drums)
Recorded: 8 September 2015, Systems Two Recording Studios, Brooklyn, New York [64:27]
It’s two years since the Russian born pianist Mischa Tsiganov released his first album on the Criss Cross Jazz label entitled ‘The Artistry of the Standard’. In it, nine familiar standards were given the Tsiganov treatment. With a surfeit of material, enough to
accommodate two CDs, he asked producer Gerry Teekens if this could be ‘Volume 1’: ‘I was arranging every day, one standard after another, like a boy in the water who never stops playing’. As it turns out, this subsequent release
‘Spring Feeling’ incorporates four standards with five Tsiganov originals. Alex Sipiagin, Seamus Blake and Donald Edwards, all members of the Opus
5 Quintet, join him once again, but new to the venture is bassist Hans Glawischnig.
Tsiganov injects his own brand of inventive genius into both the reworkings and his own compositions. Mixed meters, shifting tempos, modulations and
reharmonizations, each he negotiates with expert skill. In all the music he fuses the traditional with the new, merging together folk, jazz and classical
elements.
We open with his take on Arthur Schwartz 1934 You And The Night And The Music, a delicious arrangement that apparently caused some problems during
the rehearsal. At the bidding of the players Tsiganov had to make some adjustments. The result is a playful track in which Sipiagin and Blake take centre
stage, each having his moment in the sun. October in Kiev, one of the originals, has to be my favourite. It’s the only piece for trio on the disc.
Inspired by a trip to Ukraine’s capital, the composer proves himself a sensitive melodist, deftly weaving his piano line around bass and drums. The
improvisatory feel gives an overwhelming impression of music being created on the wing. The cleverly constructed Jumping Michael, with it’s
accented chords, paints a graphic description of the composer’s young son hopping around the family apartment, much to the annoyance of the neighbours.
There’s plenty of verve and vigour in Sipiagin’s and Blake’s virtuosic contributions.
Seamus Blake’s instinctive contouring of the opening of Wayne Shorter’s Infant Eyes is raptly intense. Brainin’s The Night Has A Thousand Eyes from the 1948 film of the same name has played an important role since Tsiganov’s youth on his personal path to
discovering jazz. Here it is given a run for it’s money, in a reworking securing favourable results. To end, all concerned give a high octane rendering of
the pianist’s Spring Feelings, the title piece.
One of the finest jazz releases I’ve heard of late, it certainly gets the thumbs up from me. I’m itching to hear the first album now.
Stephen Greenbank
CD Reviews
Criss Cross Jazz 1384
