Search - Joe Diorio :: We Will Meet Again

As good as it gets

Richard Smallfield | New Zealand | 01/02/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"We Will Meet Again
This is a wonderful solo album of eight standards and six originals; Joe accompanies himself on many of the tracks. If you are only going to have one Diorio album, this is probably as good a one to have as any.The album opens with five standards ('On Green Dophin Street', 'All the Things You Are', 'Summertime', 'Yesterdays', 'Lover Man', all played with an effortless logic and restrained virtuosity. As always, Joe manages to weave unexpected and harmonically adventurous ideas into his solos.Next come some originals: first, the delicate 'Hymn to the Holy Mother' followed by 'Poem', which is a meditative solo performance. The highlight of the whole CD for me, however, would have to be the dreamy, dischordant 'The Tip of the Iceberg', which brought to mind both Debussy and a younger guitarist, Ben Monder.Rodrigo's 'Adagio from the Concierto de Aranjuez' follows - a tune which is one of the defining moments of Twentieth Century music. Joe solos over a II-V-I progression.The blues original, 'Kong Song', has a relaxed late-night feel; Joe picks every note in the head where most players would lazily hammer-on and pull-off - and then plays a typically fascinating and adventurous solo.Joe's Indian influences are revealed in the next two meditative originals ('Chetananda' and 'India'), which have a drone bass over which simple, repeating and haunting melodies and sometimes dischordant harmonies are woven, that linger in the mind.The album closes with two more standards - 'How Insensitive' (his renderings of Jobim tunes are always absorbing) and Bill Evans' 'We Will Meet Again', an interpretation which the thoughtful composer would have approved of, I am sure - both Evans and Diorio have a reflective quality in their playing.Buy this album without fear - you will not be dissappointed."

He is the best

Richard Smallfield | 09/08/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Joe Diorio is the greatest improviser ever. He constantly breaks all rules with melody."