Cheap Going Home (Music) (Bill Mays) Price

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Customer Reviews of Going Home

Lovely stuff from a veteran pianist
I'd be surprised if there were a more sheerly lovely piano trio disc released this year than Bill Mays' new disc. It's dedicated to the memories of Jimmy Rowles, Red Mitchell & Shelly Manne. That's a great pianist, a great bassist, & a great drummer, & so it's no surprise that the music here places just as much emphasis on the roles of bassist (Martin Wind) and drummer (the always-excellent Matt Wilson) as it does on Mays's own piano. The programming is loosely based around the theme of home & homecoming, which leads to a nice mix of originals, mostly very offbeat choices of covers (only "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To" is a familiar standard; there's even a nicely judged version of Dvorak's "Going Home", which was a favourite vehicle of Art Tatum). Mays' piano has a pearly but very precise quality to it: he isn't a "look at me" player. He likes to insert quotations in his lines, & he's one of the few players who does this who doesn't irritate me, because one never feels that it's a form of exhibitionism or lazy space-filling: Mays simply has all these tunes stashed in the back of his head (much like Jimmy Rowles) & they come out naturally & as part of the flow. He's also an excellent composer, though the show is stolen by a Rowles tune, the wonderful "Nosey Neighbors", which really ought to be better known. -- The recording itself is almost eerily beautiful: not in-your-face closemiked, but instead with a kind of silkiness that pulls the listener in gently rather than jumps out at him or her. Recommended.