A Taste For Passion

Jean-Luc Ponty's final album of the '70s marks a stylistic detour from his earlier approach. He became a jazz-rock star in the first half of the '70s with a fiery but lyrical brand of fusion featuring plenty of frenetic soloing and intense interplay between violin, guitar, and synthesizers. On A Taste for Passion, Ponty slows and scales things down a bit, savoring the lyrical side of his sensibilities and making the most of his melodic gifts. There's also more acoustic piano than usual amid the synths and a greater focus on concise song forms. Unlike on previous albums, there are no epic suites here. Instead, there's languid atmosphere aplenty—the warm, almost aqueous guitar arpeggios and sonorous violin lines that kick off the opening cut, "Stay with Me," pretty much set the album's tone. Midtempo and highly melodic tunes dominate, though the fire of old is briefly rekindled somewhat on "Life Cycles" and "Give Us a Chance," where the pace gets a little more urgent and the solos burn a bit more. Passion proves that Ponty's got plenty of strings to his bow, figuratively and literally.