In a personal note that follows the liner notes of her
vibrant new album Same Day Delivery: Leslie Pintchik Trio Live (available
October 18 via Pintch Hard Records), pianist/composer Leslie Pintchik writes,
“In some ways, the release of this album is a happy accident. It was recorded
casually—on a Wednesday evening gig at Jazz at Kitano in Manhattan—just so that
I might listen back, at my leisure, to the live performance. When I did listen
to the recording, it felt like a special evening; we were fortunate to have had
a packed house as well as supportive listeners with generous ears, and they
obviously spurred us on. The name of the album reflects the relative ease and
speed with which the project came together: a ‘Same Day Delivery’ indeed.”
What a pleasure it is to hear this band and material with
the energy and enthusiasm of a live audience. As a pianist, Pintchik plays this
music with the wit, nuance and beauty her fans have come to expect. Moreover,
the trio—with the exceptionally expressive bassist Scott Hardy and the
genre-bending drummer Michael Sarin—has been playing together for over eight
years, and it shows. The band and music are tight, but also alive and fresh:
both cohesive and vibrant, the best of both worlds.
Pintchik’s new recording showcases her gifts as both
composer and arranger, and features six of her original tunes and three
standards, each one imbued with a singular character and flavor of its own. The
wide range of grooves—swing, New Orleans second-line, samba and various
Latin-based rhythms—coupled with the wide range of feeling inherent in the
tunes inspire the trio to take this vibey material and run with it.
The Jerome Kern/Otto Harbach chestnut “Smoke Gets in Your
Eyes” is played as a samba with a recurring hook in a traditional samba rhythm
that bookends the melody. A terrific groove—as well as the crowd’s
enthusiasm—sets the tone for the evening. Pintchik has suffused the Lerner and
Loewe standard “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” with a deep sense of
longing. The poignant melody has been re-harmonized and given an extended form
with a repeated ostinato rhythm. The performance of Pintchik’s up-tempo swing
tune “There You Go” has great energy and verve, and the group’s fine-tuned
hookup makes the trio feel like one instrument.
“I was inspired to play ‘Falling in Love Again’ by Friedrich
Hollaender and Sammy Lerner,” Pintchik recalls, “when I heard it sung by
Marlene Dietrich in the film The Blue Angel.” The trio achieves a beautifully
seated mid-tempo “tipping” groove, both sweet and sparky. “Terse Tune,” an
up-tempo minor blues that spans two twelve-bar choruses, has a spare melody,
hence its name. Pintchik describes her original as “a brief tune with
astringent harmonies that ends not with a bang but a whimper.”
This live version of “Your call will be answered by our next
available representative, in the order in which it was received. Please stay on
the line; your call is important to us.” captures all the zany comic energy of
Pintchik’s original. Pintchik’s tune, “Tumbleweed,” features a Brazilian bossa
feel with an underlying hint of afoxé, and is a beautifully relaxed hang.
“Let’s Get Lucky” starts life as a low-key samba, then morphs into an R & B
groove before returning to the original samba feel and a final drum solo; the
groove is the star in this Pintchik original. “I’d Turn Back if I Were You” —an
extended blues with a New Orleans second-line groove—takes its name from a sign
at the entrance to the Haunted Forest in the classic movie The Wizard of Oz.
Pintchik shines on an extroverted, enormously playful solo.
Before embarking on a career in jazz, Leslie Pintchik was a
teaching assistant in English literature at Columbia University, where she also
received her Master of Philosophy degree in seventeenth-century English
literature. She first surfaced on the Manhattan scene in a trio with legendary
bassist Red Mitchell at Bradley's, and in the ensuing years Pintchik formed her
own trio which performs regularly at New York City and East Coast jazz venues.
Pintchik has performed and/or recorded with saxophonists Steve Wilson and Rich
Perry, trumpeter Ron Horton, percussionist Satoshi Takeishi, drummers Michael
Sarin, Clarence Penn, Mark Ferber, Rogerio Boccato and Keith Copeland, and the
accordion player Shoko Nagai. Pintchik’s debut album So Glad To Be Here was
released in 2004, followed by Quartets in 2007. In 2010, she released her third
record, We’re Here To Listen, as well as a DVD Leslie Pintchik Quartet Live In
Concert. Jim Wilke, creator of the nationally syndicated "Jazz After
Hours" radio show included We're Here To Listen on his "Best CDs of
2010" list. Pintchik’s fourth album, In The Nature Of Things, was released
in 2014, and 2016 saw the release of Pintchik’s fifth album, True North.
Released in 2018, Pintchik's sixth album You Eat My Food, You Drink My Wine,
You Steal My Girl! reached #4 in the country for radio spins on JazzWeek, and
also remained in the top 10 for five weeks. Also in 2018, two tracks from
Pintchik’s releases were included in the soundtrack of the recently released
Orson Welles movie The Other Side of the Wind.
Leslie Pintchik · Same Day Delivery: Leslie Pintchik Trio
Live
Pintch Hard Records · Release Date: October 18, 2019
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