STEVENS TIM - CD LIFE'S UNDERTOW

Popis - LIFE'S UNDERTOW:
‘Life’s undertow’ (Rufus Records, 2012) is the second solo piano release from Melbourne musician Tim Stevens, following ‘Freehand’, also on the Rufus label, released in 2002. The album consists entirely of improvisations, and was recorded at Studios 301 in Sydney, as a consequence of Tim’s having won a Professional Development Award from the Australasian Performing Right Association. Composer, broadcaster and esteemed music thinker Andrew Ford, writing in ‘Inside Story’, described it as ‘one of the most original and radical recordings of improvised jazz I have heard’, and went on to speak at length of the ‘quite remarkable harmonic cogency’ and ‘genuine, functional counterpoint’, remarking on the peculiarity of hearing these things achieved spontaneously. The pieces are distinguished by a structural integrity and an harmonic adventurousness, and the album as a whole has a shape that both invites and repays repeated listening. Aaron Searle, reviewing the recording in ‘Music Forum’, writes: ‘Where many solo piano albums fall into the trap of sounding similar throughout, Stevens has constructed a suite of ten pieces in which each has its own distinct character. It seems that with each piece Stevens has taken a different approach to the task of creating something from nothing. Even with the variety of moods on offer the album hangs together as a unified whole. This is not an easy thing to achieve.’ Lyrical, passionate, and deeply creative music making that is not easy to categorise but that has broadly found sympathetic ears.