Label: Sunnyside Records, 2023

Personnel - David Behroozi: piano.

Following a well-received trio album of originals entitled Echos, American pianist Dahveed Behroozi releases Standard Fare, an intimate set of unaccompanied jazz standards that reflects his hybrid, non-traditional approach to music.

“All the Things You Are” draws the listener into his sound world with introspective temperament and poignancy in the chordal movements. This dreamlike ambience is suddenly interrupted by a swift keyboard flow infused with typically classical melodies. Once in a while, one can spot fragments of the main melody that, in a jiffy, dissolve into fluid jazz idioms. The aforementioned opener and the last track, Monk’s provocative “Trinkle Tinkle”, are the strongest of an album where spontaneous unfolding of phrases toggles between oblique and straightly leveled.

Another famous Monk tune brought to the set is “Round Midnight”, which goes from rubato to a sequence of unexpected phrasings delivered with variable pacing and bright harmonic color. Tempo is never a concern here, though. “I Love Paris” is tenderly expressed like a lullaby, carrying some wistfulness and melancholy that digs deep in emotion, whereas “East of the Sun” is treated like a pared-down nocturnal. Faithful to his crossbred variety of classical, jazz and new music elements, Behroozi shapes Rodgers and Hart’s popular tune “With a Song in My Heart” as a rhapsodic recital that still retains some of its innate original reflexes. Conversely, “Just One of Those Things” appears here with propulsive bass notes occasionally emphasized and altered melody.

Behroozi has crafted an accessible and listenable album of standards that, not matching his previous work, finds its own moods and sonic pathways.

Favorite Tracks:
01 - All the Things You Are ► 02 - I Love Paris ► 09 - Trinkle Tinkle

Label: Sunnyside Records, 2021

Personnel - Dahveed Berhoozi: piano; Thomas Morgan: double bass; Billy Mintz: drums.

San Jose-based pianist Dahveed Berhoozi merges jazz and classical streams in a peculiar way, pushing the envelope through a sui generis contemporary material that echoes a strong improvisational feel. For this album, his second, he is backed up by two New York stalwarts of the rhythm, bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Billy Mintz, with whom he has been intermittently playing since his graduation from the Manhattan School of Music.

For the opening track, “Imagery”, the trio invests in ripe elliptical patterns, crafting a consolidated, if melancholic sound that falls into place through Behroozi’s exquisite hybrid pianism (the classical influence is notorious), Morgan’s immensely spacious drive that ties everything together, and Mintz’s incredible command of the cymbals, which spark with a myriad of colors.

The closer we get to the sound, the most we are able to appreciate the spirit of this ingenious music. “Gilroy”, which was titled for the Californian town where the bandleader teaches, plays like a three-way oratorio with consistent ideas that repeat, intensify and dance together. Later on, the trio exudes a stylish samba feel with hints of hip-hop out of its deconstructed concept. Following the short bass story that occurs on top of a piano pedal, the piece ends with wide-ranging keyboard sweeps.

Intriguingly oblique, “Chimes” is a mystery unfolding that seems not to be interested in a balanced articulation. No one better to create this type of effect than Morgan and Mintz, who patrol each musical section with both loose autonomy and collective sensibility.

Whether humble or exalted, the trio sticks to their thing. The deliriously dense “Sendoff” strikes out in a freer direction, and its zany motion contrasts heavily with pieces like “Royal Star”, a fragile 3/4 statement with conspicuous brushwork and floral inspiration, and “Tricks”, where odd lyricism wrestles with several gravitational forces to generate a perceptible polyrhythmic feel.

Though a little meandering, Echos is an album of systematic ambiguity and a few pleasurable surprises.

Favorite Tracks:
01 - Imagery ► 03 - Gilroy ► 08 - Tricks