Mostly Standards

David Kikoski's ninth CD is titled Mostly Standards, barely a half-truth when you peruse the titles of the selections. Only two of them are actual American popular songs, adapted as the brilliant pianist and his able trio can do them. They also tap on the familiar repertoire of McCoy Tyner, Sonny Rollins, and to an extent Miles Davis, while offering two originals and an adaptation of a classic. Bassist Eric Revis and drummer Jeff Watts have been in the mainstream post-bop jazz game long enough to fully understand how this music works, and add their estimable talents to Kikoski's consistently wondrous and inventive piano musings. The opener "Grey Areas" is a compelling and accessible original of the pianist, combining funk with mysterious dark bass ostinato. Kikoski's true romantic and nostalgic solo piano piece "Leaves" follows a lengthy, extemporaneous, ad infinitum hard bop stretching of "Autumn Leaves," where the changes of the latter standard are only slightly hinted at in the former modification. Tunes like the easygoing Rollins chestnut "Doxy" and Tyner's emerging standard "Blues on the Corner" seem simplistic, even nonchalant in the hands of these three great jazzmen. There's peace, reverence, and repast on "Old Folks," Kenny Kirkland's "Chance," and the Watts penned waltz "TBS," which displays his atypically languid mood. In fact, Watts is much more restrained throughout this entire date. Tasteful, in control, and technically perfect, Kikoski always delivers finely wrought mainstream jazz music that should please anyone with common sense about the music's core values, and this effort is no different. ~ Michael G. Nastos, Rovi