I greatly admired Forman’s playing and compositional contribution to Gerry Mulligan’s superb 1980 big band issue Walk On The Water. Here, while his piano playing is absorbing, intense and at times really exciting, the overall compositional ambience in which it is set tends to stray rather too far from what I regard as the true jazz field.
Chiefly to blame is the rock-inspired and/or funky beat drumming of Terri Lyne Carrington; only on Near Miss did she provide anywhere near normal jazz drumming, and while a funky, broken rhythm can provide a bit of contrast in very small doses, relentlessly ground out as it is here, it turns me right off.
Then there are the vocals by Mitchel and Terri; these amount to high pitched aah-aah-aahing rather than scat singing on the beat and I found this off-putting rather than effective (eg Mr Smarty Pants). His use of synthesizers, as he puts it ‘. . . just for color . . .’, I also found distracted from his piano playing rather than augmenting it, and I particularly found the weird noises on We Start Again an irritant.
However, there are compensations. Bill Evans’s four alto sax contributions made one wish for more; on The Alley and What Else? his ethereal tone owes much to Paul Desmond and is none the worse for that, while on P.D. it combined well with the synthesizers to give, for once, an effective out-of-this-world tone colouring.
And Forman’s piano style really is well worth listening to – he does play a lot of piano as they say, with his solos on Wayne Shorter’s Beauty And The Beast, The Alley and Near Miss particularly attractive. I just wish I could have listened to him without all the trappings, and possibly on a few standards as well. (All the other compositions are by him.)
I remain a big fan of his as a pianist if not of his overall taste as a record producer – fans of the sort of stuff played by such as Al Jarreau and Chick Corea in his most modernist mood just might go for it in a bigger way however! Try it first is my advice; the title track would be as good as any.
Discography
What Else?*; Mr Smarty Pants; The End Of The Tunnel; Just Ideas*; Beauty And The Beast; Gorgeous; P.O.*; Near Miss; We Start Again; The Alley*; One Design (55.13)
Mitchel Forman (p/syn/v); John Patitucci (b/ elb); Terri Lyne Carrington (d); on tracks* only, Bill Evans (as). LA, September 1991.
(Novus PD 90664)
