Bobby Avey: Be Not So Long to Speak

Listening to US pianist Bobby Avey's first solo album is like descending through clouds on to an alien planet. The opener, Our Fortune Is Running Out of Breath, envelopes you in wreathes of dark harmonic vapours and the pall lifts only occasionally as Avey makes his way through mostly his own compositions – briefly alighting on Michael Jackson's PYT – to end on a chillingly ethereal Stardust. Yet in this sombre half-light, poised between composition and improvisation, new terrain is glimpsed, and that's rare in solo piano. Unaccompanied, the piano will mercilessly expose any paucity of ideas, but Avey has plenty of those and, if the weather on this new world isn't always sunny, it's good to hear at least that someone has discovered it.
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