EARLY SNOW

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

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The CD EARLY SNOWFALL just reached my hands (available from WWW.SUMMITRECORDS.COM)

It did as a gift from Kim Pensyl, and there’s nothing like a gift of music to cement a new friendship.

Courtly, clean shaven and trim, Pensyl does not project the kind of image many might associate with jazz musicians. Nor does his music satisfy most wrongheaded notions of what jazz is.

But we’ll have more about that in a moment…

Now, to both qualify and disqualify me, here are a couple of plain facts: 1) I love all kinds of music. 2) I am not a jazz critic.

With that, on the table, as it were, let me be plainspoken and get down to business.

I love this CD.

Would I run out and buy it and add it to my overloaded shelves?

In a heartbeat!

Note that I am not holding back.

There are eleven tracks in the album and about fifty minutes worth of listening. If you order it – and I hope you do – you’ll be treated to off-the-beaten-musical-path renditions of pop standards and traditional tunes: Winter Wonderland, Oh Christmas Tree, Jingle Bells, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Christmas Time is Here Again, I’ll be Home for Christmas, Joy To The World, Hark The Herald Angels Sing, Let It Snow, Silent Night and the song that gives the album its title: Kim Pensyl’s Early Snowfall.

Pensyl, at the keyboard leads the peerless personnel for the recording: Rick VanMatre on saxes and flute, Rusty Burge on vibraphone, Michael Sharte on bass, John Taylor on drums – five musicians with class and musicianship to be reckoned with.

The music, all but the title song familiar to most of us, is given a fresh makeover by the quintet in arrangements by Pensyl that mine unpredictable harmonic twists and turns next to modal gestures. I never knew some of these tunes could sound as if they had been written in the 15th century!

I’ll Be Home for Christmas is delivered free of sentimental sap in a crystal clear session of show-and-tell by flute, vibraphone and reeds.

Joy To The World is stripped of any hip-hip-hurray religious bathos yet keeping its innate spirituality.

Having grown up in Cuba I can assure one and all that it never snows in that part of the world, but, if it did, Jule Styne’s Let It Snow would be a welcome anthem on the island provided it came in this hot version by Pensyl .

Pensyl’s gorgeous Early Snow is a ballad with a singable tune that cries out for words (which it probably has.)

The composer-keyboardist gets the album’s last musical word by casting a magic spell with Silent Night.

The engineering and production by Kim Pensyl and the CD’s classy packaging would make this a perfect Christmas gift for any music lover.

I already got mine.

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”