Music Banter - Ari Erev's "About Time"

Artist: Ari Erev
Title: About Time
Genre: Jazz
Label: Independent
Rating: 8/10

Israeli-born pianist and composer Ari Erev, has been playing the piano since the age of four and the time he has spent perfecting his craft is both evident and extraordinary on this debut album About Time. With Yorai Oron on the bass and Gideon Pasahov on the drums, the trio plays a melodic and inviting mix of original jazz compositions and standards.

Erev’s opening track “Prelude: Anticipation” sets up the sonic landscape with a two note motive, resourcefully winding through a myriad of progressions and augmented harmonies. Midway through the album with “Interlude: Anticipation”, he’ll start and end at the same place, but will expand upon the harmonic structures he introduces in the prelude.

The album’s structural framework is completed with “Postlude: Turn Out the Stars”, a Bill Evans composition, that opens with the now familiar two note statement, however it is extended from the two notes to two measures. The interplay and function of these three defining pieces, the prelude, interlude, and postlude is as much aesthetically pleasing to the listener as it is a thoughtful and deliberate expression of the human experience of an isolated moment, a two note motif, repeated and extended as it is recalled over time.

Musical gems fill in the album’s framework. Erev’s “Fading Memories” suggests one’s own fading memory by making use of a motive switching between major and minor thirds, while every now and again, playing the two notes at the same time. Another Erev piece, “Past Desire” takes the motive from “Fading Memories” and develops it with a cool languor, creating a beautifully reflective and melodic piece.

Erev’s album is poetry to the ears; a metaphor of music as time itself by way of thoughtful and emotive musical interplay between musicians and the listener’s experience of the music. Comprised of musical ingenuity and talent that builds upon itself both musically and philosophically, the album will stimulate your mind.

Tracks
1. Prelude: Anticipation (Short Version)
2. Fading Memories
3. Song With No Name
4. Luigi's Muse
5. These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)
6. The Two Lonely People
7. Interlude: Anticipation
8. Waltz in G
9. It Could Happen to You
10. Past Desire
11. I Remember You
12. The Policeman's Ballad
13. Postlude: Turn Out the Stars