Ken Peplowski

Item: Easy to Remember
Author: Jeff Cebulski

Easy to Remember

(2004)

Reviewed by Jeff Cebulski

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Label Nagel HeyerThe Phantom Tollbooth2004

jazz swing

After a few years away from Concord, for whom he recorded many albums, clarinetist and saxophonist Ken Peplowski has emerged with a well-produced and smartly-played CD that exhibits his experience and growth as a soloist as well as a pleasantly distributed session that takes advantage of all of the participants.

Peplowski, like so many of nagel heyer's lineup, represents a slowly dying generation that was nurtured in swing and bop. European and American late middle-agers still consider that music to be quintessential jazz even though much of the material that is played in concerts and recordings has been overexposed to the point of triviality. So it takes a true jazz artist to make old music listenable.

Peplowski is one of them. Even though the song list is loaded with composers like Porter, Strayhorn, Ellington, and Coleman, this veteran knows how to twist melody and arrange solos so that the musicians, not the song, become the things that are "easy to remember."

The first evidence, after a breezy rendition of the title song featuring the classic crooner Bobby Short, is cut two, "Restless," in which Peplowski's tenor interplays with the slyly smooth guitar of Joe Cohn, whose solos call to mind the intricate picking of Jim Hall. Peplowski's solo teeter-totters from melody to scat as smoothly as if he were taking a rhythmic stroll. On "Copi," Peplowski cops some Desmond vibe as he searches the upper register for beautiful music, leading to a tasty solo by another crafty veteran, pianist Ted Rosenthal. The clarinet emerges on Ira Coleman's "With Every Breath I Take," and Peplowski elliptically caresses the melody to create intimacy with a hint of mystery. He stays with that reed into Jobim's "Louisa" and into Porter's not-too-often recorded "Everything I Love." Produced with proper studio echo by Frank Nagel-Heyer, this performance reaches chamber music excellence that is matched later on by his extended solo of Ellington's beautiful "Single Petal of a Rose."

The only nod to modern music is a rendition of Paul McCartney's "Junk," with Kim Liggett on vocal. For this crew, it's a perfect vehicle for sensitive playing, something both Peplowski and Cohn excel at.

Another exceptional performance occurs toward the end, a bluesy playing of "Smoke Rings," where Peplowski conjures the ghosts of Stan Getz and Coleman Hawkins to swing through a trio treatment that makes the listener wish for ten minutes more: his invention never fails.