| Reviews |
Reviews for "Stomps" - Excerpts **** "Just when we thought everything possible with jazz piano trios had been done, this Melbourne trio's debut album forces a rethink." - John McBeath, The Australian **** "Splendid. Winkelman's 14 joyous originals embody the exhilaration of music making and not a hint of fat... here we come a little closer to the divine." - Ken Williams, The Age EG "In the era of the postmodern piano trio, Winkelman’s already claimed his place at the table." Nate Doward, Cadence (USA) **** "Here's a party with converstions everywhere." - Leon Gettler, The Age Green Guide "A talented musician, with an approach that is refreshingly different." - Adrian Jackson, Rhythms "This is a terrifically enjoyable album, full of energy and spirit..." - Tim Stevens, Music Forum Click here for full review for "Stomps" Reviews for "The Spanish Tinge" **** "The 'tinge' in the title track refers back back to Jelly Roll Morton, the great pianist, diamond-toothed hustler, dandy, pimp, loudmouth and jazz music's first great composer. His business card described him as the 'Originator of Jazz'. Morton's advice:'If you can't manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning, I call it, for jazz.' Morton, a New Orleans Creole, redefined jazz with cross-cultural ethnic tastes and spices, which Winkelman seems to recognise. Here, the Melbourne pianist cooks up a bouillabaisse of flavours including stride, tango, Latin and Afro-Cuban rhythms. With bassist Sam Anning and drummer Ben Vanderwal. The presentation is tightly drilled but the music zings with an electricity of counterpoint and ideas popping up everywhere. Even the genres are reshaped: a tango rhythm worked over with a chord structure and melodic line not heard in that setting shifts in time, transforming a Latin beat. The most stunning moment is saved for last in his jazzed-up rendition of the emotional Yiddish song, Vilna. More please." Leon Gettler, The Age Green Guide, May 3, 2007 **** "Melbourne pianist Ben Winkelman has travelled an individual path since his 2005 album Stomps, Pieces and Variations, which resurrected ragtime and stride piano using his contemporary-styled originals. The new title is a quote from Jelly Roll Morton, who believed the Spanish Tinge was essential seasoning for jazz, meaning Latin rhythms and Habanera ideas ought to be inherent in the music. Winkelman has achieved this by more than simply playing predictable Latin beats; he moves between rhythms, sometimes abandoning tempo altogether, and makes effective use of extended harmonies, swinging improvisations, even classical phrases. All but one of these pieces are originals and the title track is the only one to include ragtime references, but in Winkelman's signature style it soon digresses into a contemporary piano groove, then stately tango rhythms, followed by an evocative Latino-flavoured bass solo from Sam Anning. Ben Vanderwal handles the often complex percussion extremely well in this unusual exploration of nostalgic styles from the Spanish Quarter of old New Orleans, with a 21st-century makeover." John McBeath, The Australian, May 12, 2007 General reviews and gig reviews "Jazz with a gumbo essence More than 60 years after the death of Jelly Roll Morton - New Orleans pianist and self-proclaimed inventor of jazz - the "Spanish tinge" he described as essential to jazz is alive and well in the hands of Ben Winkelman. Winkelman named his new CD for the famous quote, and Thursday's launch at Bennetts Lane was liberally seasoned with Hispanic and Afro-Carribean ingredients. But, if Winkelman's musical gumbo combines flavours from New Orleans, Cuba and Brazil, it's also been strained through a contemporary sensibility. Thursday's concert opened with a quasi-salsa set to a 7/4 rhythm: the first of several "corrupted claves" we would hear during the night. In fact, almost all the Latin-inspired numbers bristled with odd time signatures and sly rhythmic shifts. Perhaps, after 14 years of playing for dancers with Latin band Rumberos, Winkelman is keen to ensure that audiences at his trio concerts remain firmly in their seats. Many of the pianist's compositions are complex, incorporating intricate arrangements that rely on split-second timing and precision. Fortunately for Melbourne audiences, Thursday's gig came at the end of a long national tour, so Winkelman and his colleagues (bassist Sam Anning and drummer Andrew Gander) sounded impressively tight as they negotiated Winkelman's musical brainteasers. The CD's title track, The Spanish Tinge, was delivered with a wonderfully exuberant energy as it veered from an upbeat, bouncing stride feel - zigzagging through various tempos along the way - to a sashaying tango walk. The Tearing of the Veil sounded like a fun fair ride on a Cuban ghost train, with dark piano chords chopping up a swaying habanera rhythm. The Seven Odyssey conjured up a kaleidoscope of muscial colours and cross-rhythms, all three players determined not to let the knotty time signature prevent them from having a good time." Jessica Nicholas, The Age, July 7, 2007 "A welcome addition to the thriving Melbourne contemporary jazz scene." Mal Stanley, ABC Classic FM, presenter of 'Jazztrack' "I always find his work interesting and engaging." Jessica Nicholas, 3RRR, presenter of 'The Village' and music critic for The Age "Ben's work is mature and consistently interesting. His technique is excellent and his ideas are always stimulating." Steve Robertson, 3PBS, presenter of 'Jazz On Saturday' **** "Just when we thought everything possible with jazz piano trios had been done, this Melbourne trio's debut album forces a rethink. As the title suggests, this is an unusually diverse collection of pianist Ben Winkelman's original compositions. Opening track Trio Piece In Seconds And Thirds is a good example of Winkelman's diversity. Beginning with elements of contemporary classical, then moving to a bass and drums-studded bebop style, it segues into an authentic rickety-tick ragtime. It's as if Scott Joplin had detoured via Herbie Hancock with advice from Bela Bartok, all influences that Winkelman acknowledges. Rodrigo Aravena (bass) and Danny Fischer (drums) are essential ingredients in the mix, contributing foundational stabs, rhythmic emphasis, interposing phrases and swinging solos, particularly from the double bass. This highly original music traverses vastly varied territory, utilising pre-modern styles such as stride piano, but reinterpreting and refurbishing them in a contemporary setting." John McBeath, The Australian, November 5, 2005 **** "The debut album of Melbourne's Ben Winkelman Trio is quite splendid. Pianist Winkelman's 14 joyous originals embody the exhilaration of music making and not a hint of fat. Bassist Rodrigo Aravena and drummer Danny Fischer are wonderful collaborators. Lines are clean, concise, decisive, dynamics deft. Winkelman reaches back to the Harlem stride pianists (he immersed himself in Duke Ellington as he wrote) and the "Spanish tinge" of Jelly Roll Morton to produce a harmonious propulsion that defies the listener not to smile. On his website Winkelman notes that his grandmother played in an all-girl ragtime band in New Jersey in the 1930s and wonders if his recent interest in earlier jazz forms might result in part from genetic memory. If so, thank you lady ragtimers, for here be riches. Writer Kurt Vonnegut, proceeding into his 80s, offers as his epitaph, should he ever need one: "The only proof he ever needed of the existence of God was music." When so much of music is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, here we come a little closer to the divine." "Sometimes it seems like just about everybody is styling themselves "eclectic" nowadays – it’s a word I’ve come to dread when it turns up in press releases – but Australian pianist Ben Winkelman is the genuine article, a determined crossbreeder of styles whose music is inventive and often surprising. Classical music and tango and klezmer are all in there somewhere, but what’s most striking about his music is his determination to inject stride piano and ragtime into a familiar post-Hancock/Tyner keyboard idiom. Usually when contemporary pianists hark back to earlier styles it’s via Monk and Ellington – key names here are Jaki Byard, Ran Blake, and Dave Burrell, not to mention European players like Guus Janssen and Michael Braam – but Winikelman doesn’t go that route, and perhaps as a result there’s something of a stylized etude-like quality to his music (“Study In Seconds and Thirds” could have been straight out of Debussy’s Children’s Corner). I’m left with the feeling that the individual components of this music are less original than the way it’s put together, but it’s hard not to enjoy the panache and sense of fun: Winkelman’s tunes keep you guessing, and the trio negotiates their hairpin musical turns with ease and vivacity. Best tracks: the fast-paced "The Deadly Vice of Nostalgia", the quietly estranged ballad "Stand A Little Taller At Yom Kippur", and the genre-hopping minor key swinger "Trio Piece In Seconds And Thirds". In the era of the postmodern piano trio, Winkelman’s already claimed his place at the table." Nate Doward, Cadence (USA), November 2006 **** "Here's a party with conversations everywhere, each track a different story, which pretty well sums up much of the appeal of this offering from the talented Melbourne pianist. The first, Trio Piece In Seconds and Thirds, pops with constantly shifting ideas that take the listener aback. Fragmented, full of tightly scripted calls and responses, then shifting gears into a driving swing. The second, Bananeiro, nods in the direction of Jobim. And so it goes. Each piece has a strong sense of narrative, conversation and direction, from the slow and evocative ones (Stand a Little Taller at Yom Kippur), European jazz (The Tomasa Variations) or echoes of Jelly Roll Morton (Maxine's Stomp), with Winkelman's flourishes and dissonances making it his own. Another strength is the support from, and the space given to, bassist Rodrigo Aravena and drummer Danny Fischer. They have lots of room to stretch out, and create something new, taking the lines from the piano and developing them further with their own voice." Leon Gettler, The Age Green Guide, October 20, 2005
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