[Harp-L] Andy Milne and Gregoire Maret "Scenarios": short review

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is a brief review of the CD "Scenarios", a set of duets featuring pianist Andy Milne and chromatic harmonica player Gregoire Maret.  Short summary: this is a great record, with brilliant playing, compositions, and improvisations.  I don't think it's likely to be to everyone's taste.  If you like 20th century composers like Stravinsky and Bartok, modern jazz (think Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, or Keith Jarret with Jan Garbarek on sax) and jazz harmonica players like Toots Thielemans, you're pretty likely to enjoy this record.  If your tastes in music run mostly or exclusively to folk-based styles like blues, bluegrass, or rock, this record may not be your ideal listening material.  If you're not sure about it, go to http://cdbaby.com/cd/milnemaret and check out the samples. In fact, go check out the samples whether you're sure or not--you're sure to hear something new and cool.

As per my comments above, this record is thoroughly modern (meaning adventurous and sometimes dissonant) in terms of the song structures and performances.  The rhythms are generally straightforward, and pianist Milne does a terrific job of establishing harmony, pulse, and melody all at once on these fairly complex pieces.  (If my left hand on piano was as good as his, I might give my right a vacation.)  Of the 11 pieces, 4 are improvised, and 7 are through-composed, meaning the players are working from a score.  It's a measure of the skills of these players that I can't tell which is which without consulting the liner notes.  Recording quality is excellent, on a par with releases in a similar vein on the ECM label.  

Chromatic harmonica virtuoso Gregoire Maret and I share the distinction of being the only harmonica players to have recorded with jazz vocalist Alyssa Graham (http://cdbaby.com/cd/alyssagraham), though when I recorded with her in 1991, she was fronting the now-long-deceased rock band Blindman's Holiday.  (I bet Gregoire got paid better than I did.)  Maret's work with Graham is very straightforward song-based jazz, beautiful and melodious in equal measure (and deserving of a review in its own right).  

Maret is clearly influenced by Toots Thielements, but he has a gorgeous, big sound that in my opinion surpasses Toots's.  His tone, lines, and phrasing show tremendous variety and virtuosity--his sound in the top octave in particular is just luminously beautiful.  On the second piece on the CD, an improvisation titled "Pharos of Alexandria", he manages to evoke the tone and style of a wood flute with his chromatic harp.  The subtle shadings of pitch and the slide flourishes he puts into his lines here are unlike anything I've heard from any other harp player.       

I could go on, but I said I'd keep this short.  Maret is clearly one of the top jazz harmonica players in the world.  If you like jazz harp, get this record.  If you don't think you like jazz harp, listen to the samples on CDBaby so you can get a taste of the state of the art.

Final comment: thanks to falling prices for high-quality recording gear, which has practically eliminated barriers to recording for most artists, we are now seeing a steady stream of great harmonica recordings in just about every genre.  Isn't that great?

Regards, Richard Hunter
latest mp3s and harmonica blog at http://myspace.com/richardhunterharp