JIMMY BENNINGTON - New Jersey Freebie
SLAM Records SLAMCD 596
Jimmy Bennington, drums; Steve Cohn, piano, voice; Ed Schuller, bass, voice
Recorded June 26, 2014, at Steve Cohn Studios, Hackensack, New Jersey, USA
This CD opens and closes with two, well-known ‘standards’, Night and Day (Cole Porter) and Body and Soul (Johnny Green) the other five tracks coming from members of the band. Regardless of the source, there are no predispositions in the music’s presentation, which moves between passages of quiet, yearning tranquillity and periods of frantic commotion. The whole is distinctly out of the ordinary, seeking out as it were a new direction for the piano, bass, drums trio.
Bennington’s drumming is a bit different, especially in its impropriety, its looseness, which leaves room for those around him to indulge in their own forms of discerning freedom.
Apart from a toy drum as a child, he started his musical life playing clarinet in elementary school, then switched to drums aged thirteen. He studied with Elvin Jones for ten years from 1994 and has travelled around the States quite a bit, experiencing playing with marching bands, jazz, blues and concert combos as well as in improvised music groups.
His principal inspirations he claims are John Coltrane, more than anybody, and Art Blakey, Roy Haynes, Jimi Hendrix, Elvin Jones, Philly Joe Jones, Sunny Murray, Max Roach and Howlin’ Wolf – among others.
At just over 37 minutes long, if the CD were twice that there would be nothing in it of which one might tire. It’s very different, very imaginative, even perhaps unique.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
SLAM Records SLAMCD 596
Jimmy Bennington, drums; Steve Cohn, piano, voice; Ed Schuller, bass, voice
Recorded June 26, 2014, at Steve Cohn Studios, Hackensack, New Jersey, USA
This CD opens and closes with two, well-known ‘standards’, Night and Day (Cole Porter) and Body and Soul (Johnny Green) the other five tracks coming from members of the band. Regardless of the source, there are no predispositions in the music’s presentation, which moves between passages of quiet, yearning tranquillity and periods of frantic commotion. The whole is distinctly out of the ordinary, seeking out as it were a new direction for the piano, bass, drums trio.
Bennington’s drumming is a bit different, especially in its impropriety, its looseness, which leaves room for those around him to indulge in their own forms of discerning freedom.
Apart from a toy drum as a child, he started his musical life playing clarinet in elementary school, then switched to drums aged thirteen. He studied with Elvin Jones for ten years from 1994 and has travelled around the States quite a bit, experiencing playing with marching bands, jazz, blues and concert combos as well as in improvised music groups.
His principal inspirations he claims are John Coltrane, more than anybody, and Art Blakey, Roy Haynes, Jimi Hendrix, Elvin Jones, Philly Joe Jones, Sunny Murray, Max Roach and Howlin’ Wolf – among others.
At just over 37 minutes long, if the CD were twice that there would be nothing in it of which one might tire. It’s very different, very imaginative, even perhaps unique.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
