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| 4.460 Ft
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| 1. | The Best Thing for You
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| 2. | Home With You
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| 3. | Bourbon Street Jingling Jollies 5;35
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| 4. | Riverboat Shuffle
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| 5. | Love Locked Out
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| 6. | If Not For You
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| 7. | Multi-Colored Blue
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| 8. | Noir Blue
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| 9. | Nobody Else But Me
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| 10. | Little Dogs
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Jazz
Ken Peplowski - clarinet
Shelley Berg - piano
Jay Leonhart - bass
Joe La Barbera - drums
Throughout his career, Ken Peplowski has been categorized by most critics as a traditional jazz musician and heir to the Benny Goodman throne. His new recording, Noir Blue, shows that he is more diverse as a player and composer. Doubling on clarinet and tenor saxophone, Peplowski weaves through beautifully arranged and seldom heard tunes by Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Irving Berlin and others as well as originals by fellow band mates Shelly Berg and Joe La Barbara. Peplowski's compositional contribution is Little Dogs, inspired by Ornette Coleman and titled from a quote by Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov.
The clarinetist and tenor saxophonist Ken Peplowski has a vaunted reputation in one specific corner of the jazz universe: he's the guy you call for a Benny Goodman tribute, or for any number of cruises and picnics in a traditional vein. That's a matter of taste, but also of typecasting. Like a handful of his peers Mr. Peplowski, 50, has broader interests than his conservative profile would suggest.
And yet he absolutely owns that profile, with an offhanded authority that speaks to his rightness for the part. His excellent new album, "Noir Blue" features three songs by Billy Strayhorn, and one apiece by the comparable Great American Songbook touchstones Berlin, Carmichael and Kern. And two of the album's three originals - by Mr. Peplowski's pianist, Shelly Berg, and his drummer, Joe La Barbera - fit easily in the mix.
The album avoids any hint of starchy obligation or misty nostalgia. Mr. Peplowski attacks these songs eagerly, as if tearing them out of their shrink wrap. His clarinet playing is, as always, sprightly and controlled, expressive but never shrill. On "Bourbon Street Jingling Jollies" one of the Strayhorn tunes (jointly credited to Duke Ellington), he adopts a sensuous croon; on "Multicolored Blue" also by Strayhorn, he opts for sly languor. The band, with Mr. Berg, Mr. La Barbera and the bassist Jay Leonhart, matches his high degree of enthusiasm and meets his high level of expertise.
That applies no less to the tracks featuring Mr. Peplowski on tenor saxophone, an instrument he plays with sportive grace, nodding obliquely at Ben Webster and Lester Young. On "Love Locked Out" a Ray Noble ballad, he shows his debonair side; on Kern's "Nobody Else but Me" he begins with an assertive chorus backed only by Mr. La Barbera.
Then there's the closer, "Little Dogs" the only piece composed by Mr. Peplowski. Inspired by the free-jazz patriarch Ornette Coleman, it's a blues of indeterminate tonality, eliciting open-ended playing across the board. That it doesn't sound at all incongruent means, among other things, that Mr. Peplowski and his band have been doing their job.
---NATE CHINEN |
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