Personnel:
Jeong Lim Yang (b), Adam Kolker (ts), Michael Attias (as), Nick Sanders (p), Jesse Simpson (d)
Reference: FSNT-529
Bar code: 8427328435291
Jeong Lim Yang gained her recognition from playing with New York City's veteran artists such as Tim Berne, Oscar Noriega, Adam Kolker, Michael Attias and Billy Mintz since she moved to the Big Apple in 2011. Yang's first leader album "deja vu", has reflected her pure inspiration of playing with these musicians and her compositional ideas resemble much of her hero's like Charlie Haden and Paul Motian.
"Yang's interpretation of modern jazz is unique and creative, and her musicianship is at the top level of current community standards in jazz and art."
-Michael Attias
"This is bassist Lim Yang's first album as bandleader and composer, and it's excellent. The three-in-one interaction from her trio with Sanders and Simpson is top-notch and throughout, Yang projects beautifully considered dynamics and drive: hear the relaxed swing of Deal Breaker or the resonant depth of tone on her pizzicato introduction to Cherry. Her colourful and characterful pieces are given readings as incisive as they are flowing from a first-class ensemble.
There's a lovely, spacious mix of historical literacy and contemporary freshness here with, e.g., the side-slipping opening rubato bars of Moon Tethered conjuring echoes of Monk and Cherry based on the trumpeter's solo on Una Muy Bonita from the 1960 Ornette Coleman Change Of The Century album. There's also a deep strain of sinewy lyricism - sample the affecting piano and bass figures early on in Are You Happy Now? or the tenderness of the saxophone lines in Ravine - allied, overall, to a Mingus-like intelligence regarding matters of ensemble texture and weight, with the various transitions in the voicings consistently arresting.
New York drummer Vinnie Sperrazza contributes a useful sleeve-note, placing the music in the context of the Masabumi Kikuchi trio with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian and further exploratory figures such as Charlie Haden and the aforementioned Coleman. But as Sperrazza says, it's what Lim Yang and her colleagues do with such influences and affinities that strikes home, making this one of the most rhythmically engaging and lyrically attractive albums from the Apple I've heard for some time.
Michael Tucker (September, 2017)
Jazz Journal Magazine
