Josh Nelson

I Hear a Rhapsody

JAZZTIMES
Reviewed by Perry Tannenbaum
December 2009
Josh Nelson
I Hear A Rhapsody (Steel Bird)

Although they were recorded less than two years apart, there are radical differences between the Josh Nelson who appeared on Let It Go and the leader we find here. He has gone from a dressed-up to a casual look on his album cover, swapped out his rhythm section, and lost his aptitude for diffidence and the forgettable. There were tracks on his previous disc where Nelson sounded content to serve as backup for the guest saxophonists he brought in to the studio. Not here.

Listen to him infusing fresh adrenaline into the dreamy old ballad “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square”. There’s a lightness in Nelson’s touch reminiscent of Red Garland, an Oscar Peterson dazzle to his technique, and the interplay between him and bassist Hamilton Price recalls the legendary Bill Evans-Scott LaFaro hookup. The rest repeatedly lives up to the promise of that opening trio track, with Ben Wendel and Tom Catanzaro on reeds or Charles Altura on guitar adding their instrumental colors on five of the other 11 tracks.

“Bhutto Song” is the most colorful of the seven Nelson originals, dedicated to the spirit of Benazir Bhutto, the slain Prime Minister of Pakistan, with Wendel playing tenor and bassoon on the head and Nelson shuttling among three instruments, including Fender Rhodes and trumpet. Perhaps even more memorable and profound is “Nebulous”, where we first hear Catanzaro on tenor. Following that longest cut, Catanzaro’s work on soprano sax in “Mint Blues” is wilder and Altura’s more virtuosic. Among the other covers, the title track is eclipsed by the Latin-Baroque flavor of Elliott Smith’s “Everything Means Nothing To Me”, capped by Nelson’s most prodigious assault on the keyboard.