Bill Carrothers: Family Life

Rating: ★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Bill Carrothers (p)

Label:

Pirouet

July/2012

Catalogue Number:

PIT3063

RecordDate:

June 2009

While putting the underrated tag on the idiosyncratic pianist-composer Bill Carrothers (who's actually in his mid-forties) isn't just lazy journalistic hyperbole, he didn't help himself by removing himself from the rough and tumble of the jazz scene in the big smoke to a remote part of Michigan more than 15 years ago. But this sense of intense privacy feeds into Family Life, which is an exquisite, often serene, and very personal set of solo piano pieces. Based largely on a soundworld suggesting a fading Americana: folk music, pastoral hymns, spirituals and classically-oriented piano miniatures, those previously enamoured with Carrothers' offhanded wit as a jazz pianist in trio with Gary Peacock and Bill Stewart, and other high profile sideman roles as well as other releases on this high class German indie label Pirouet, might find less to get excited about. But the tranquillity of the mood is broken up midway through, with Carrothers turning to a more pulsating, blues-coloured shuffle on a couple of tracks and eerie shifts in harmony emerge. There's plenty to admire in Carrothers' elegant poise and touch, and he's never less than engaging even when the material might be less interesting for fans of his clearer jazz-orientated piano excursions.

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