The music on this CD varies between funk, folk and jazz and ultimately misses all three. Garland’s folksy tenor and soprano solos bounce along merrily enough but have little real musical substance to sustain them or the listener. The best track from a straightahead jazz perspective is Re: Person I Knew which is, of course, Bill Evans’s ballad anagram for his Riverside producer of the sixties, Orrin Keepnews.
All That’s Left has noodling marimba and tenor excursions and towards the end the leader gets into a post-Coltrane bag with some convoluted harmonics. Most of the selections are lightweight, funky themes with, generally, solos to match. The mixing down of the drum solos to a whisper is strange; did the sound engineer have a feud with the drummer on the date or just decide for himself that nobody really wanted to hear drums?
Introduction is a lovely, Evanesque piano prelude leading into a warm, romantic reading of Re: Person I Knew but these two wholesome tracks are a bit like finding an oasis in a desert.
Discography
Tales From The Sun; All That’s Left; Hwyl; Bebe; Introduction; Re: Person I Knew; Season Of Faith; Growing Young; Serafina; Dawn Bird (58.02)
Tim Garland (ts, ss, syn, wdf); Huw Warren (p); Tim Wells (b); Anthony Kerr (vib, m); Mark Fletcher (d); Bosco De Oliveira (pc). February 28, 1995.
(EFZ 1014)
