EXCLUSIVE MAGAZINE

by Russell Trunk

Featuring guest vocalist Elisabeth Lohninger and some collective improvisation from the ensemble, this quite breathtakingly ambient album opens on the luxuriant The Welcome Song, and backs that up with the upbeat and perky What Happened (based on the chord changes of I Got Rhythm), the stirring title track (once again featuring Lohninger on vocals atop an alto sax back line from Lisa Parrot) A Centering Peace (written to celebrate the 75th birthday of Monsignor Edward Straub and to commemorate his 50th Anniversary in the priesthood), and then we get the foot-tapping, Pete McCann guitar rocking euphoria of War Paint.

The delicate Pirouette en Dedans (which translates to English as a dancer spinning on one foot with the body turning inward) is up next and that is followed by mid-tempo hipsway of Every Detail Minding (a title culled from Woodruffs failed attempt to set Langston Hughes poem Old Walt to music; settling on his favorite phrase from the poem as the title instead), and then we get the gently existential, guitar rock imbued Undertow, with the album rounding out on an up-tempo modal tune Freeway Doctor East (whose title pokes fun at the inability of a GPS system to cope with the abbreviation for Drive), closing on the King Size Blues – a vocal track, again with Lohninger front and center, that recalls Ellington and Basie, but with a few twists.