Everything that's good and bad about "smooth jazz" . . .
Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 07/09/2008
(4 out of 5 stars)
". . . is contained herein.
At the start, let's get one thing straight: This is not jazz. Why not? There's little if any improvisation. That's perfectly OK. Let's just not use the word "jazz" in relation to this music, because improv is what jazz is all about.
I don't know what label is appropriate for this music. Adult-oriented instrumental music? That probably comes closest.
What this music is, is composed, jazz-tinged, mood instrumental music, in my view. There's not anything wrong, per se, with it. In the actual listening, it can be quite attractive. Melodic-based, rhythmically catchy, it often is, at least initially, quite attractive. Because it seldom (if ever) ventures into risky improvisation, it can become musically static, if not outright banal.
However.
The best practitioners of this music, of whom Dan Siegel is at the first rank--when he's on, as he is here--sometimes lift us out of and beyond its admittedly stifling limitations.
OK. I'm gonna come clean. I'm a lot more likely to pull this out and play it than I am some of the more prickly avant-jazz that inhabits my ridiculously huge collection.
Why?
I'm usually just not in a deal-with-it frame of mind, which is what is required for avant-jazz. Does that make me a weenie?
Maybe.
But I don't care. I'm pretty sure no one can gainsay my avant-jazz creds. If I fess up to having a soft spot for adult-oriented jazzish cheese, does that cancel out my out-jazz credibility?
Again, maybe.
But I don't care. I'm not sorry I purchased Dan Siegel's latest: it's real purty.
Deal with it, jazz police."
Track Listings (13) - Disc #1