2008-01-22
DOWNBEAT By John Ephland - Review
DOWNBEAT
February 2008
One Sky
Motéma
Pianist Ryan Cohan’s One Sky lands somewhere between outright jazz with straightahead affectations and a classical, long-form exposition. The 10 pieces may include a standard like “Lush Life,” but the theoretical basis for the project subsumes everything.
Subtitled Tone Poems For Humanity, the album keeps listeners on the edge of their seats with arrangements and instrumentation that make it impossible to hear the Billy Strayhorn classic as a reverie to a life of “jazz and cocktails” amid all this flurry. Instead, the insistent musical drive throughout suggests Cohan is in the philosophical thrall of what it means to be human, inserting an Abraham Heschel drop quote–”The truth of human being is the love of being alive”–in the middle of his liner notes.
Cohan’s strong ensemble includes up to eight people at one time, including tenor and soprano saxophonists Bob Sheppard and Geof Bradfield(who also plays bass clarinet) and Tito Carrillo on trumpet and flugelhorn. Cohan’s arrangements deftly weave standard jazz soloing into a mix of lines that keep the music on a storytelling path. After the insistent drive of the first five songs, One Sky builds to a climax over its centerpiece five-song suite. “Awe” and “Hope” offer a picture of a composer whose instincts are to get our full attention and to think of the big picture. Likewise, “Wonder And Response” features a more contemplative Cohan leading his band with fine horn charts, but also showing how expressive a pianist he can be. The album may not produce any real hummable melodies, but its lively outpouring intimates a restless, creative talent.
–John Ephland
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